G8 brutality

Italian police officers found guilty of G8 brutality

15 members of the police officers, prison guards and doctors were found guilty of brutality, including physical and mentally torturing at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001 and sentenced to between five months' and five years' imprisonment. The charges include abuse, fraud, criminal coercion and inhuman and degrading treatment. One demonstrator was shot dead by police and hundreds more injured at the summit in the city of Genoa that was hosted by Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi.

The heaviest sentence of five years was given to an inspector in the penitentiary police department. All those convicted are expected to appeal and none will go to prison until the appeals process is complete, which normally takes years. The lengthy trial proceedings and the statute of limitations mean that none of the defendants will serve any time, but the verdict paves the way for a major compensation claim.

Former deputy police chief of Genoa, Michelangelo Fournier, said he had kept quiet until then "out of shame and a spirit of comradeship". In June last year a senior police officer belatedly admitted in court that police had "butchered" protesters. "The court recognised that something serious happened in the barracks of Bolzaneto," prosecutor Vittorio Ranieri Miniati said.

Police organised brutality at the Diaz High and at the Bolzaneto police barracks. Prosecutor Patrizia Petruzziello said the protesters suffered "four out of five" of the European Court of Human Right's classifications for "inhuman and degrading treatment". Italian, British, Polish and Irish people were injured at the school. In the barracks' medical center, several women were forced to strip naked in the presence of male officers. Demonstrators were stripped, spat on, verbally and physically humiliated and threatened with rape and sodomy.

29 police and members of the prison medical service are still on trial. 24 protesters were sentenced last December to between five months and 11 years in jail.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=2...e91c6
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnL14289424.html