Police on Tuesday served 17 arrest
warrants and 12 restriction-on-movement orders against members
of a squatters' movement in the northern city of Turin for
alleged involvement in a radical anti-eviction campaign.
The suspects face possible charges of damage to public
property, interruption of public service, resistance to public
officials, violence and land and property invasion in relation
to a series of actions taken between September 2012 and January
2014 to prevent illegally occupied property from being
reclaimed.
The group is also accused of carrying out recent acts of
vandalism against local headquarters of the Democratic Party
(PD) of Premier Matteo Renzi, who has made responding to Italy's
chronic housing shortage for low-income earners a priority since
taking the reins of government in February 2014.
Tuesday's police raid centred on a former nursery school in
Via Alessandria, occupied by squatters since 1995 and which had
become the centre of the radical protest movement in Turin.
Three of the people arrested were already in jail on
suspicion of terrorism in connection with 'No-TAV' protests
against the construction of a controversial high-speed rail link
from Turin to Lyon in France.
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