Oct 2007 - Updates on Genoa Court Case
The prosecutors ask 225 years of jail for 25 protestors

Genoa court case are not ending tomorrow, but they are drawing to a close, an people seems to have forgotten what Genoa meant and how big part of history we have been when we decided to take the streets in those days of july 2001.

While the court cases against police officiers for the tortures in Bolzaneto and for the raid in the Diaz school move slowly forward (one will be ending by the end of the year and the other around summer 2008) towards meak convictions and satute of limitations after the first court sentence, the court case against 25 protestors has seen this last weeks the prosecutors final speech.

In their speech the prosecutors Anna Canepa and Andrea Canciani frontally attacked the protest in Genoa, asking 225 years of jail for the 25 people accused of devastating and sacking the city on july 20th and 21st. The speech of the prosecutors asks people to call Genoa events for what they were: devastation, sacking, arson. They stated that at the same time the massacres and the abuses of police should be prosecuted but never did themselves open an investigation on the facts, and insisted that they should be kept out of the court case against 25 protestors. The prosecutors actually said that people decided to resist and that this fact should be sanctioned, since they should have dispersed and eventually file a complain for the violence the police enacted.
In their speech the prosecutors tried to explain the judge that all of those who were present in Genoa are equally responsible of the allegations, since "moral responsability is even more crucial than material responsability for Genoa events: if I inspire 20 people to throw a stone I should be hold more responsible of devastation than if I threw five of them". This brings back criminal codes to the middle age, where you were not supposed to actually have done anything to be convicted. This is why some of the accused where asked to be convicted to 6 years only because they are seen around the scenes of the riots (not doing anything particular or in a lot of cases just putting some trash bin in the streets to slow down police charges).

But this is not the worst part of the prosecutors speech, since they have been reinterpreting Genoa to provide history with a clean and one-sided version of the events: Police acted correctly and protestors are oversizing the abuses, but the Truth is that they should have gone home and let the Summit be. The prosecutor have been stating that the charge in via Tolemaide against the Tute Bianche demo was fairly quick and not particularly violent, so it's not understandable how protestors would complain constantly of "fearing for their own life"; they have been saying that Carabinieri armored transport only charged at full speed twice and that the barricades were made before this, so protestors should not "fuss" about it being the reason for the vehicle attack. They even came to minimize Carlo Giuliani's death, saying that there could have been worse situation if the Carabinieri inside the soon-to-be-burned van were not rescued by their colleagues.

Our history is being raped by two prosecutors who desperately want to show that 4 years of enquiry were useful (even if to justify their lies they misuse only statements of the defense's witness) and that someone is responsible for what happened in Genoa. They want to show off in the "trial that will change many a ways to do court cases in Italy", at the expenses of 25 protestors like all of us. If the judges will acknoledge the point of view of the prosecutors, and convict 25 people to 6-16 years of jail, each one of us could be the next culprit. Think of how many insults you have shouted during the g8 in genoa, think of how many stones you have thrown, think of how much rage you felt while you and your friends were beaten.

We agree only on one point with the prosecutor. Let's call Genoa 2001 for what it was: it was a revolt and it was history and it was us. And that's why they are scared and why they want to avoid that anybody will try again to take away power from where it usually stands.