G8 prosecutor 'slanderous' in Regeni torturer remarks

(ANSA) - Rome, March 21 - Italian police chief Franco Gabrielli on Wednesday said Genoa prosecutor Enrico Zucca had used "slanderous" words in saying Italy could not expect Egypt to hand over the torturers and murderers of Giulio Regeni when its own torturers responsible for Genoa G8 brutality in 2001 headed up the national police force.
    Gabrielli said Zucca had made "far-fetched comparisons and slanderous accusations that just go to show the nature of the man who made them".
    "We demand respect in the name of those who gave their blood and lives," Gabrielli said at an event commemorating Beppe Montana, a Palermo police commander killed by the mafia in 1985.
    Giovanni Legnini, the head of the judiciary's self-governing body the Supreme Council of Magistrates (CSM), meanwhile said Zucca had used "inappropriate" words.
    The prosecutor-general of the supreme court of Cassation opened a probe into Zucca's remarks. Legnini said Zucca's statement Tuesday "was a strong statement with some inappropriate words".
    Legnini voiced "esteem and confidence in the heads of the police force".
    Zucca, however, was undeterred.
    He said the government must explain why it kept at the head of police forces officers who had been convicted of brutality at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa.
    "The government must explain why it kept convicted (officers) at the operational command," he said. "The removal of a convicted official is a conventional obligation, not a political choice, and I have said and written these things in the past too," he said.
    Zucca said Tuesday, repeating previous similar remarks, that Rome cannot expect Egypt to hand over those who tortured and killed Giulio Regeni as long as its own torturers head up the Italian police, referring to brutality at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001.
    "Our torturers are at the top of the police, how can we ask Egypt to hand over their torturers?" said Zucca.
    Zucca was among the judges who convicted Italian police of brutality in a night-time raid on an anti-globalist sleeping quarters in the Diaz school, an incident described by Amnesty International as the worst postwar suspension of democracy in Europe.
    Zucca went on: "September 11 2001 and the G8 marked a rupture in safeguarding international rights.
    "The effort we ask of a dictatorial country is an effort we have shown we ourselves cannot make for less dramatic affairs".
    Regeni, 28, was tortured and murdered in Cairo early in 2016 in a case in which Egyptian security officials are suspected.
    Egypt has always denied the involvement of its security apparatus, which is frequently accused of brutally repressing dissent.
    Regeni was being followed by police because of his research for Cambridge University into Egyptian street-seller unions, a politically sensitive issue.
    His main contact, the head of the Egyptian street-hawkers' union, had told police he was a spy.
    Regeni's parents said Tuesday they felt "abandoned" by the government since an Italian ambassador was reappointed to Cairo last summer.
    photo: Zucca