On Thursday, November 13, 2008, was closed the last of the three large first-level trials for the events tied to the protests against the G8 of July 2001 in Genoa.
The trial against 29 police officers for the raid on the Diaz School, which ended in 93 people illegally arrested and 61 of those seriously injured, ended with an exemplary sentence: sixteen acquitted and thirteen convicted. The court decided to convict only the operatives and to acquit those who planned the mean-spirited and vindictive operation on all charges.
To absolve the liars who, to justify a butchery, decided to plant two molotov petrol bombs in the afternoon between the siezed objects, to lie about the knifing of an agent, to cover each other by spinning tales of incredible resistance on the part of the occupants of the school and sacking the media center across the street.

Torture, threaten, trample and crush the rights of the people, particularly if you belong to the forces of law and order, and they are demonstrators: in this country, that's a "nothing" crime. In contrast, breaking a window is one of the most serious crimes anyone could be possessed to do. The people are nothing. "Stuff" is everything. That is the moral that emerges from the Genoa trials.

The sentence of the trial against the 25 demonstrators for the Genoa g8 riots has fixed the price to pay for expressing our own ideas and going against the actual state of things: 110 years of jail. The tribunal, formed by chief judge Devoto and two associate judges Gatti and Realiani, was not brave enough to oppose to the savage reconstruction of the collective history towards the power that the public prosecutors Andrea Canciani e Anna Canepa asked to guarantee.
On the contrary it did even worse. It chose to sentence that there is a good and a bad way to express our own dissent, that there are tolerable ways to protest and ways that should be punished as if they were a war crime.

To top it all, the Court has also given a consolation prize to the defence lawyers and to all the "honest citizens": the files on the false statements given by two Carabinieri (military police) and two policemen will be the start of an investigation, a sweetener that does not mitigate the importance of the sentence and a pittance that we strongly reject.

The Genoa court has decided to support all those political forces, all those conventional thinkers, all those lawyers that - consciously - hoped that a few, even less that the 25 defendants, would be condemned to drew a sigh of relief, to point their finger dripping with morals and guilty conscience.
The use of devastation and sacking as a crime to condemn facts occurred during a political demo opens the way to a dangerous operation, that would like to see people motionless to the choices of those who govern, defenceless to the daily abuses of power from a system in deep democratic crisis, even befor economical one. None of those who where in Genoa in 2001 and that have build their careers on the Genoa slogans (and have later betrayed them all with any possible vote or action), has rised against this absurd and opportunist operation: almost nobody from the whole center-left-wing coalition has found time enough to state that today not only 24 people, but all the demostrators have been convicted to years of jail.

The same thing has happened inside large parts of the movement, with a lot of people trying to sabotage the messages of the demo that only three weeks ago has filled the streets of Genoa. They created confusion about who was fighting for a different life and society and who was protecting the actual state of things, maybe because their dignity is confused too. So, many words were said and written about a possible parliamentary committee of enquiry, about Truth and Justice, yet too few words about those 25 people who were going to be the scapegoats of a scared power.

Yet Genoa can't be erased with an act of revisionism by the Court, nor with hypocritical and opportunistic choices and skeletons hidden in the cupboard. The 80.0000 people that last November, 17th have marched in Genoa were not asking for a parliamentary committee of enquiry; they wanted to state loud and clear that 25 people can't shield an inconvenient historical passage that questioned so strongly our lifestyle and society. We believe that those 80.000 people are listening to us and will not let a Court expropriate their memory and devastate the lives of 24 people.
This sentence tries to overwhelm us and make us feel ashamed of what we where and lived, giving a dim view of moments of riot that instead deserve the light and dignity of moments of popular will; but we will not apologize for anything, because we have nothing to repent and we consider Genoa 2001 the highest moment of our political lives.

We believe that all of those who were in Genoa should scream: in any case, no regret. No regret for the streets taken from the rebels, no regret for the terror of the G8 closed inside the red zone, no regret for the barricades, for the broken windows, for the foam-rubber protections, for the plexiglass shields, for the black dresses, for the white hands, for the pink dances, no regret for the resolution we questioned the power for some days.
We said it the day after Genoa, and during all those years: memory is a collective gear that can't be saboted. And we will feel no regret for what Genoa was and meant for us.
Today, like yesterday or tomorrow, we say again: in any case, no regret.

Supportolegale has been dealing with Genoa G8 court cases for 4 years now, as a collective made up of people who have been protagonists, together with thousands of other people, of those events that made Genoa e crucial node of our lives and histories. The november 17th demo was born first and foremost out of the generic call to mobilization on the Genoa courtcases we published as Supportolegale on 2 Itlaian left-wing newspapers - Liberazione and Il Manifesto - few weeks before the demo. Supportolegale chose to promote and participate in the organization of the demo in order to keep the event focused on the defence of the 25 protestors who are being used as scapegoat of those days of our collective history. What is happening in these years in the Courts of Genoa - and Cosenza - aims at terrorizing the most spontaneous and decentralized forms of social and political organizing. This is why we called out the demo using the refrain: "We are history".

We are history - a call to mobilization for november 17th 2007

It's been years we have asked everybody to take responsibility as
collectively as possible for what the mobilizations against G8 in Genoa
were.
The arrogance of Genoa prosecutors during the final speech of their
accusation in the court case against 25 protestors accused of devastation
and sacking seems to have eventually aroused the hearts and brains of
300000 people that in Genoa opposed themselves to the politics of the G8.
We think this is not the time for childish hairsplittings and sectarism.

Genoa, 13th December 2005

This marked the eleventh hearing in which the already notorious Zampese appeared - now, more than ever, the absolute star of the event. Canciani gave way - somewhat unwillingly - letting him assume control of the mouse and computer, and Zampese (employed at the G8 Office, set up especially to investigate the summit events, and appearing in the eighth consecutive hearing as a witness) did everything alone. He chose the finds, the photos, the frames, the audio reels, all the while giving his own - personal - opinions. The 69th hearing in the trial against the 25 demonstrators accused of destruction and looting continued, with the occasional memory and pronunciation problem on the part of the witness. The tour he offered of Genoa - via finds and photos - carried the court along Corso Buenos Aires, Piazza Tommaseo, Via Pozzo, Via Dassori and Via Montesuello. In other words, the route the prosecution has described as that "taken by the Black Bloc". In today's hearing, Zampese made it as far as Friday 20 July, at around 1pm. At that point, even the Court threw in the towel.

Genoa, November 9

One of the 93 people beaten by police during the raid on the Diaz-Pertini School on the night of July 21-22, 2001, testifies before the 1st Bench, headed by Justice Gabrio Barone, in the Genoa Court's 1st Criminal Tribunal.

The most frequent question people made this morning in the room of the Court of Assizes in Genoa, where, by the 3. penal division, the second hearing for the Bolzaneto trial took place: "Was the Cirielli law already approved?".

The 59th hearing was devoted entirely to Mario Placanica, the former Carabiniere who shot and killed Carlo Giuliani in Piazza Alimonda on July 20, 2001. The session drew large numbers of journalists, enormous security and many members of the public.

After the summer stop in the first hearing of the trial against the 25 demonstrators under indictment for devastation and sacking during the G8 in Genoa 2001 two witness were heard.
The first two hours were spent in the examination of the witness Sebastiano Pinzone, Genoa’s Digos (political police), convened for the identification of one of the accused through photos, took while he was shopping in his town.

The 20th of September, in the halls of Genoa?s Court, the
trial against the 25 demonstrators accused of the crime of devastation and
sacking, started in March 2004, continues. It will be the hearing number 58, and it

On July 20, 2005, Vittorio Agnoletto, an MEP and well-known figure in the Italian far left, made the following statement:
"Those who led the repression, those who attacked the Diaz School, those who fabricated evidence have been promoted, thanks to the 'good job' they did. At this point, I'm expecting a decree to appoint the Black Bloc official advisors to the Interior Ministry or Special Units".

The server autistici.org/inventati.org is an independent server managed
by a
no-profit association that gives webspace to websites of lawyers,
journalists,politicians,humanitarian associations,legal offices,labour

Investigations are to be officially closed against 190 people for episodes on the street, while 50 are to stand trial for destruction and looting.
For once we're able to relay advance news on judicial proceedings relating to other demonstrators at the Genoa Group of Eight Summit, the prosecutors Canepa and Canciani and the Genoa Public Prosecutor's Office.

The 51st hearing in the trial against 25 demonstrators charged with looting and ransacking during the Genoa Group of Eight Summit made slow progress. Serious doubt was cast on the prosecution's identification process, while various prosecution witnesses were absent.