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.

So we are finally almost there: one of the four court cases around the events of july 2001 in Genoa has seen its first grade sentence, while other three are drawing to a close within the summer.
The court case against 25 people has seen people convicted to something like 110 years of jail, ranging from mere 6 months to 11 years per person. Nobody in sane mind would have expected otherwise, Genoa could not be left without someone to pay for it. But still people hoped for something different, for someone to speak up about the absurd decision of the court, or for people to take to the street again and defend their comrades. This has not happened.

A 50-year sentence, was the request of the prosecutor for the alleged "Sud Ribelle" ("Rebel South") defendants. This sentence is linked with the final bars of the trial that is taking place in Cosenza, which involves 13 codefendants, charged under various Titles of the law against
"Subversive Association." They are accused of aiming to impede the exercise of the functions of the Italian government during the Global Forum of Naples and at the G8 Summit of Genoa of July 2001.They are also accused of aiming to create a larger association composed of thousands of people ready to violently subvert the economic order constituted in the State.Not bad, for a plant.
This trial will be remembered from its very premise as having been a grotesque, tragic farce, an Italian comedy, more like "I Mostri" than like, "Persons Unknown." (I soliti ignoti)
The sentencing request of Prosecutor Fiordalisi (wanting to get himself a little bit of glory), however, was no laughing matter. This sin is

Cosenza, 01/21/2008. In today's hearing of the trial of the thirteen activists - accused of subversion of the economic order constituted by the state with the goal of destroying the cities of Naples and Genoa in 2001 - a single certainty was born: on Thursday, January 24th, from 9:30 a.m. on, Dr. Domenico Fiordalisi, representing the ROS and DIGOS special-ops police forces and others, wil vomit up all his hatred towards social struggles. Today there appeared the state prosecutor, who completed his speech in two words ("My associate") and he also on Thursday morning will tell of his own hatred of the same. Then the technical experts and consultants were heard.

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.

Today, 10th of december, we got the first judgement for the antifascists accused of devastating and looting during the antifa demo that took place in Torino in June 2005.
The judge didn't charge them with the devastating and looting charge, but they are still accused of damages, though it's a less serious accusation that should drop because of the pardon law: this means that they shouldn't spend one single more day in jail.

news (in italian): http://piemonte.indymedia.org/article/766

a short summary of what happened in Torino in June 2005:

During the night a fascist action squad got into the Barocchio squat in Torino with knives and sticks: 2 anarchists got wounded, one of them got severely wounded in his intestine and had to be operated. It was just by chance that nobody died.

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.

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.

Update on the Genoa Legal Cases - summer 2007

For background info:
http://supportolegale.org/?q=node/601 -> summary of court case just before summer 2006
http://supportolegale.org/?q=node/971 -> summary of court case as of january 2006

On the 16th of January, the trial against 25 activists charged with "sacking and devastation" during the Group of 8 Summit held in Genoa in July 2001, was opened again after a long continuance, due to the decision to change some judges of the Court. The hearings should go on for one month, until the 16th of February.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

Public Statement

AI Index: EUR 30/005/2006 (Public)
News Service No: 192
21 July 2006

http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=ENGEUR300052006

FIVE YEARS AFTER THE G8 GENOA POLICING OPERATIONS: ITALIAN AUTHORITIES MUST TAKE CONCRETE ACTION TO PREVENT AND PROSECUTE POLICE BRUTALITY IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES

The author of the video testifies: the sequence of a beating was cut. After his testimony the videomaker from Bologna was stopped by two policemen: “They threatened me”

SIMONE PIERANNI
GENOVA

There won't be any cut of the offended parties. Genoa's Court remarks there was a misunderstanding regarding the decree of February, 8th, which raised doubts about the chance to cut the number of witnesses to listen to.

Two months after the beginning of the trial about the Diaz events, court president Barone has issued a decree according to which from now on judges will only listen to witnesses with new evidence or with evidence which has not been admitted by the court yet -- provided that other witnesses can be examined as regards their injuries.

Genoa, 16.02.06

There will be no reduction to the number of plaintiff testimonies. The Genoa court underlined that fears raised by a court order of February 8 - that the number of plaintiffs/witnesses for the prosecution would be cut - were based on a misunderstanding. The court president, Barone, has issued a new court order making it clear that all the plaintiffs in the trial will testify, at least about the damage and injuries suffered. They will also be able to testify about "new, different, or more precise information" on facts that have already been confirmed.

On the 11th January the witnesses hearings restarted in court for the trial against the policemen who raided the Diaz school on the 21st July 2001, at the end of the G8 protests in Genoa.

During the 19th and the 20th hearings, which took place on the 11th and on the 19th January respectively, several British witnesses recalled their experience in the Diaz school and in the facing media centre.

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.

Supporto Legale 2005-2006

For more than a year, Supporto Legale has been fighting on the battleground of the repressors: in the courtrooms. For us, it means dealing with a contradiction on a daily basis: we we trust neither justice system nor democratic state. We don't believe we will find truth and justice in a courtroom. But nor do we want the courts to freely enforce their own version of "justice".

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.

Support and assistance for the Genoa Segreteria Legale, the Cosenza trial and events in Naples in 2001 is still going on.

Supporto Legale is continuing its committed work in support of the Segreteria Legale and lawyers involved in the trials stemming from events at the Genoa G8 summit (including that in Cosenza) and Naples in March 2001. Set up by a group of media activists from the Indymedia network, together with activists from across Italy, the team is working hard, focusing on communication and information, as well as the more technical and financial side.

Genoa, November 17

Ninth hearing in the trial against 29 top police officials, charged with grievous bodily harm, falsifying evidence and fabricating charges, following the raid on the complex known as the "Diaz schools"

Genoa, November 15

65th hearing against the 25 demonstrators accused of destruction and looting during the Genoa G8 summit.

Zampese, who has failed to testify on four separate occasions, was again expected to take the stand this morning. However, the hearing was brief, and most of it took place in chambers. The public prosecutor presented a brief regarding the court's decision to disallow material regarding the position of one of the defendants, because it was received after the investigation had officially closed.