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.

January 25, 2006 - 21st hearing in Diaz Trial The dramatic beating of journalist Mark Covell

British media activist Mark Covell testified in court during the 21st hearing of the Diaz process, giving a clear, precise account. He entered the Diaz School late in the evening, together with someone else. Not long after, the alarm was sounded over the police raid. The two left and tried to get away. Covell's friend managed to hide in the Pascoli School. Covell was less fortunate. "I was surrounded by five police officers. I remember shouting 'I'm a journalist!', but a police officers showed me his baton and said to me in English: 'You're Black Bloc and we kill people who are Black Block'. He started hitting me on every part of my body. I stayed standing and then I was charged by police with shields. It all took about two or three minutes." This was the first time Covell was beaten.

Genoa, 11th January 2006

Three witnesses testified during the 19th hearing in the trial into the raid on the Diaz School, speaking to a courtroom packed with Italian and foreign journalists.The first was Bill Hayton, the BBC journalist working in Genoa as an independent professional "as most of the BBC journalists were assigned to the Red Zone" and he believed it important to follow events linked to the anti-G8 demonstrations. He was summoned to the Media Centre of the Pascoli School by a colleague, Mark Covell, to view a film of Carlo Giuliani's murder. Hayton's testimony was punctuated by phone records of his calls to the BBC. There's a gap between 12:06 am and 12:44 am when the police, having also entered the Pascoli School, stopped him from using his phone for an interview. He was blocked as a police "hostage" for 40 minutes, and was only able to cross over to the opposite school once the police left, where he found the blood and destruction left by the raid.

This was a positive hearing, particularly for the plaintiffs. All requests
made to join the criminal proceedings as co-plaintiffs were accepted. The
panel of judges dismissed defendant objections to civil liability, meaning the