A torture bill demanded of Italy by
the Council of Europe after police brutality at the Group of
Eight summit in Genoa in 2001 will hit the Senate floor next
week, Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said Friday.
"We're at the amendments stage, finally I see a lane free in
the Senate to get to the end," said Orlando, who said the law
would not be only "general but also based on the (G8) affair".
Orlando was speaking a day after the European Court of Human
Rights said Italy had agreed to pay compensation to six out of
65 Italians and foreigners who said they were subjected to
police brutality at the Bolzaneto barracks in 2001.
Italy admitted its responsibility for the Bolzaneto brutality
and agreed to pay 45,000 euros each to six citizens for moral
and material damages as well as court costs, the ECHR 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 by 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 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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