Italy has admitted its
responsibility for police brutality at the Bolzaneto barracks
during the Genoa G8 in 2001 and has agreed to pay 45,000 euros
each to six citizens for moral and material damages as well as
court costs, the European Court of Human Rights said Thursday,
in a ruling in which it noted the "amicable resolution between
the parties".
The violence and humiliation inflicted on anti-globalisation
protesters at the barracks, the HQ of the city's flying squad,
was the second of two infamous cases of police brutality during
the summit in the northern Italian city.
The first took place at the Diaz school, being used as a
billet for protesters.
In the night assault on the Diaz school, hundreds of police
attacked about 100 activists and a few journalists, wounding 82
and seriously injuring 61 - three critically and one, British
journalist Mark Covell, left in a coma with rib and spinal
injuries.
Officers planted evidence including two Molotov cocktails
and hammers and knives from a nearby construction site to
justify the raid.
Amnesty International called the event "the most serious
suspension of democratic rights in a Western country since the
Second World War".
Later, at the barracks in Bolzaneto, some 252 demonstrators
rounded up at the Diaz and another school, the Pascali, said
they were spat at, verbally and physically humiliated or
threatened with rape while being held.
There have been numerous convictions over the two episodes of
brutality, although the national police chief at the time,
Gianni De Gennaro, was the only senior officer to be acquitted
at the end of the appeals process.
A court found, however, that he had demanded arrests "to
redeem the image of the police from charges of inertia".
Irking members of Italy's opposition, he was named the CEO
of the State-controlled Italian defence and aerospace contractor
Finmeccanica, now called Leonardo.
During the 2001 G8, one protester was shot dead while
attacking a Carabinieri policeman, shops and businesses were
ransacked, and hundreds of people injured in clashes between
police and demonstrators.
The Council of Europe last month urged Italy to pass a
torture law to deal with such episodes of brutality.
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