Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 15, 2008 11:18:22 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Italy's Berlusconi Understands the Bush Family's "New World
Order"
Rape threats, beatings and racist chants:
15 Italians jailed for abuse of G8 Genoa protesters
Sentences up to 5 years for mistreatment in 2001
Verdict likely to embarrass Berlusconi government
15 Jul 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/15/italy.g8
Fifteen Italian police officers and doctors were last night
sentenced to jail terms of up to five years after being found guilty
of abusing protesters detained during riots at the 2001 G8 summit in
Genoa.
The sentences totalled less than a third of what had been demanded
by the prosecution. But they will nevertheless be embarrassing for
Silvio Berlusconi and his rightwing allies, in office in Italy both
then and now.
Thirty other defendants were cleared of charges ranging from assault
to the denial of basic human rights. The judges issued their
verdicts after 11 hours of closed-doors deliberations.
The court heard former detainees including Britons testify that they
were insulted, beaten and sprayed with asphyxiating gas. Some were
threatened with rape.
Detainees were made to join <Berlusconi's goons> in chants in praise
of Italy's late fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.
Another chant, lauding Chile's [fascist dictator] Augusto Pinochet,
ended:
"Death to the Jews."
Between 100,000 and 200,000 demonstrators converged on Genoa seven
years ago to take part in anti-globalisation protests. Most were
peaceable, but some were not, and the situation deteriorated as the
police employed tactics that many witnesses described as heavy-handed.
The violence peaked with the death of a 23-year-old Italian
demonstrator, shot dead by a conscript Carabiniere. More than 250 of
those arrested were taken to a holding camp that had been created at
Bolzaneto, six miles from Genoa, where the abuses took place.
The heaviest sentence, five years, was given to the camp commander,
Antonio Biagio Gugliotta. Twelve other police officers, eight men
and four women, received jail terms of five to 28 months.
The chief of medical services at Bolzaneto, Giacomo Toccafondi, was
given one year and two months in jail; he was accused of insulting
detainees and failing to inform authorities after they were sprayed
with asphyxiating gas in cells.
The detainees at Bolzaneto included about 40 who were arrested in a
raid on a school being used as a dormitory. A judge ruled that there
was no evidence to show any of those demonstrators had been involved
in the violence in Genoa.
One, a Briton, Richard Moth, later told the Guardian that, despite
injuries sustained in the raid that had him "screaming with pain",
he was made to stand for hours spread-eagled against a wall.
The Bolzaneto trial was one of three arising from the Genoa G8
summit. In December 2007, 24 demonstrators were found guilty of
damage to property and looting. They were given sentences ranging
from five months to 11 years. In the third, ongoing trial, 28
defendants, including some of Italy's most senior police officers,
face charges related to the raid on the school, which left 62
injured, three in comas.
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