Front page of the Wall Street Journal: Police Raid in Genoa 6 Aug 01
Mailing list della sinistra
(english)
by We are winning 10:36pm Mon Aug 6 '01
The mainstream can no longer ignore it.
WSJ article:
G-8 Protesters Say They Were Beaten,
Deprived of Rights by Police in Italy
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and IAN JOHNSON
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Just before midnight on July 21, Miriam Heigl, a political-science
student from Munich, was figuring out a way to get home after three days
protesting the Group of Eight summit in the Italian city of Genoa.
As she scanned train schedules posted in the Armando Diaz school
complex, some 70 members of an Italian SWAT team smashed through the
front door, wielding truncheons and shields, their faces covered with
blue and red handkerchiefs. Ms. Heigl and about 30 others were arrested
and taken to a police barracks, where the 25-year-old says she was made
to strip, humiliated and deprived of basic civil liberties.
Miriam Heigl
Hospital records show that 61 others in the school fared worse -- they
ended up requiring treatment for injuries. "All I remember is being hit
on the head with a truncheon right away," says Melanie Jonasch, a
28-year-old archeology student from Berlin, "and then I woke up here" --
in a Genoese hospital, where she has had surgery for a broken mastoid
bone behind her left ear.
To millions world-wide, the Genoa G-8 summit two weeks ago will be
remembered as the most violent in a series of international protests
against "globalization," a rallying cry first popularized during clashes
at a 1999 trade meeting in Seattle. As the leaders of eight leading
industrialized countries met in Italy, TV viewers around the world
watched police fight citywide battles with anarchist militants who set
dozens of cars, banks and storefronts afire.
But out of the TV cameras' gaze, another scene of violence was unfolding
-- on the part of the police. Now, as details of the school raid emerge
sketchily, it is turning into a political crisis for the government of
Silvio Berlusconi, the pro-American media mogul who ran on a
law-and-order platform.
Initially, his government firmly defended police behavior. Mr.
Berlusconi said the school raid simply proved "collusion" between the
anarchists and mainstream demonstrators. Communications Minister
Maurizio Gasparri said it was "a detail" whether "a cop used his
truncheon four times instead of just three." The police, in a report a
few hours after the raid, said that the school was a "refuge of the
extreme fringe of the Black Block," and all those inside were members of
that violent, anarchist group.
More recently, however, the government said something may have gone
wrong. The judiciary has launched an inquiry into the use of violence
during the raid and the treatment of those detained. Parliament has
formed a separate commission of inquiry. Interior Minister Claudio
Scajola promised last Wednesday that "if some untoward behavior will
emerge, and it looks like it is emerging, then it will be severely
reprimanded." Shortly thereafter, he removed three top police officials,
saying this would make it easier to investigate.
Join a discussion: What impact are antiglobalization protests having?
* * *
Italy Is Getting Edgy About Hosting Food Summit After the Genoa Riots
Demonstrators Remain in Detention in Genoa Amid a Slow Investigation
(Aug. 4)
Berlusconi Defends Genoa Summit as Outcry Over Police Action Rises (July
27)
Italy's Opposition Criticizes Handling of Genoa Protests (July 24)
G-8 Leaders Discuss Environment, Politics as Protests Take Violent Turn
(July 21)
Part of the pressure on the government is coming from abroad, especially
Germany. After first helping gather information on 39 Germans arrested
in the sweep at Diaz, Berlin is calling for a fuller accounting. German
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer delivered that demand to his Italian
counterpart in a telephone call last week.
The official inquiries are just beginning, but interviews with numerous
participants and witnesses offer the most complete account yet of the
events at the Diaz school. The accounts of 19 Diaz detainees, who were
interviewed in five countries, and those of doctors, local officials and
neighborhood witnesses indicate that heavy force was used to arrest
demonstrators who, for the most part, hadn't been organizing the
preceding days' violence but had been peacefully protesting. After being
denied contact with lawyers and families for anywhere from one to four
days, most of the people detained at Diaz were brought before judges,
who released all but one and found that the overwhelming majority of the
arrests were "illegitimate."
A complete response from the police wasn't possible because the raid is
under investigation. In an interview, Francesco Gratteri, head of the
national police Central Operative Service, partly defended the raid.
"One must take into account that the raid was very energetic because it
was met with an equally energetic resistance," said Mr. Gratteri, who
stood in the school's courtyard when the police charged in. But he added
that "evidently something abnormal happened there, which is why there is
an investigation."
For Ms. Heigl, the events began around 11 p.m. on Saturday, July 21. She
and her boyfriend, Tobias Hubner, were heading over to the Pertini
middle school, part of a group of junior and senior high schools known
as the Diaz school complex.
Ms. Heigl was feeling a sense of relief. On Friday, a militant had been
shot dead by police. On Saturday afternoon, tear gas had been used to
disperse a crowd estimated by the interior ministry at 200,000. As
rumors circulated that the police would raid places where the
demonstrators camped, such as the stadium where she and Mr. Hubner had
been sleeping, they decided they wanted a safer place. They headed for
the school, also open to the demonstrators, because it was just across
the street from the headquarters and press center for the mainstream
organizers.
Eager to Get Home
Back in Munich, Ms. Heigl had been engaged in fighting radical
right-wing groups and won a prestigious national award for her work. But
this was the first big demonstration she had attended, and she was
exhausted from the crowds and flood of information. "Everyone was
unsettled and we just wanted to get home," Ms. Heigl says.
After checking train schedules near a computer area on the ground floor,
she and Mr. Hubner walked upstairs to visit a friend. Suddenly, panic
broke loose. From downstairs she heard cries of "Police! Police!" as the
front door crashed open. Then she heard screams and the sounds of police
yelling and smashing things. "We had total fear," she says.
Panicked, she and her boyfriend looked for an escape. The school was
under renovation, and scaffolding lined the outer walls. They climbed
onto it and waited.
Downstairs at the computers, Ms. Jonasch stayed put, figuring that her
fluency in Italian would help her explain that she wasn't a violent
militant. She says she had been working as a volunteer at the
headquarters and hadn't been out to the protests. But she says a group
of riot police wearing helmets and body armor charged around the corner,
truncheons flying. She says that besides the initial blow to her head,
which knocked her out, she was hit on the shoulder and buttocks.
The hospital that treated her received dozens of similar cases. Among
patients still there last week was Daniel Albrecht, a 21-year-old cello
student from Berlin, who has undergone brain surgery to treat cerebral
bleeding and says he hears metallic sounds when he speaks.
Another patient was Lena Zuhlke, a 24-year-old student of Indian culture
at the University of Hamburg, who says she was beaten, thrown down two
flights of stairs and dragged by the hair. "I didn't see any faces.
Throughout all this, I couldn't see anything at all above the knees,"
says Ms. Zuhlke, her hand on a jar attached to her chest to catch fluid
draining from her lungs.
Police, while asserting that all those inside the school were anarchist
militants, also have said that any protesters who were hospitalized were
extremists injured during earlier street battles. That's an explanation
that doctors say doesn't mesh with the cases they saw. "There is no
doubt that these wounds were fresh. We had to sew up many of them on the
spot," says Roberto Papparo, head of the emergency department at
Ospedale San Martino, Genoa's biggest hospital. It dealt with more than
50 injured youths from the Diaz school shortly after the raid, Dr.
Papparo says, adding: "If these people weren't brought to the hospital,
there is no doubt that some of them wouldn't be alive anymore."
A visit to the school several hours after the raid showed pools of blood
on the floor and walls and several teeth strewn around.
Apart from a handful who escaped, all the demonstrators at Diaz who
weren't hospitalized -- 32 people -- were rounded up. Ms. Heigl says
that after she heard the screaming and saw police beating students
unconscious, she and Mr. Hubner feared they would be in worse danger if
caught clinging to scaffolding. They climbed into the room, knelt on the
floor and put their hands on their heads. That didn't prevent Mr. Hubner
from receiving a few blows to the back and head with a truncheon, and a
dozen others interviewed say they too were hit while in a submissive
position.
Ms. Heigl says she wasn't hit. She was taken to the Bolzaneto police
barracks, which had been turned into a holding center for the G-8
summit. Situated inside a vast park-like complex of the national police
VI Mobile Division, the center had a series of unfurnished cells that
could hold 20 to 30 people each.
Detainees say they had to stand spread-eagle against the wall for two to
three hours. They add that police walked up and down the line, beating
those whose hands slipped and whose heads weren't bent down. "They kept
cursing us and calling us names that I couldn't understand," Ms. Heigl
says.
The man next to Ms. Heigl was pulled from the wall and sprayed directly
in the face with tear gas, say Ms. Heigl and a protester interviewed
separately. He collapsed and was dragged away to be showered. He came
back later, shivering, saying he had been stripped naked and left under
the water for half an hour. The group was then sent to their cells, and
the man had nothing to clothe himself with except a plastic shower
curtain, according to Ms. Heigl and the other person, who both say they
received just one cookie each to eat on Sunday. At night, they say, they
slept on a concrete floor and had just three blankets for 30 or so
people.
"We had this feeling that everything was completely arbitrary and that
they had lost their minds," Ms. Heigl says. "But now I see that it was
all done extremely professionally. They wanted to disorient us and break
us, as though they were dealing with a gang of hardened terrorists."
The prisoners were registered on Monday, and their numbers at Bolzaneto
police barracks grew as many initially hospitalized were sent over.
Among them was Sherman Sparks, a 23-year-old from Oregon spending a year
in Europe. He said in a sworn affidavit that he had been kicked in the
head and groin during the raid.
He, too, said he had to stand spread-eagle for two hours. He said in his
affidavit, which he sent to the U.S. Consulate in Milan, that people
standing next to him had broken arms and legs and that one man
collapsed, shaking uncontrollably. That incident is related by others as
well. When Mr. Sparks couldn't understand commands in Italian, his
affidavit alleges, he was slapped or beaten or his head was rammed into
the wall.
Detainees held in different cells and not known to each other paint a
common picture of the one to three days they spent in the detention
center: Strip searches were common. Men and women alike were forced to
use the toilet with police officers, usually men, in attendance. Women
were denied sanitary napkins, and requests for medical attention were
often refused. Roll calls went on day and night. Detainees were asked to
sign documents in Italian that they couldn't understand and then sent
back to the cell. Some signed, while others refused. Phone calls and
contact with attorneys weren't permitted.
A Little Better
Relief for Ms. Heigl came on Tuesday, July 24, when she was one of the
last to be transferred to a normal prison. Before leaving, she says, she
was ordered to strip naked again while a man in a blue polo shirt
inspected her. Some others say the same thing happened to them. Then
they were allowed to dress and eyeglasses taken from some detainees were
returned. But rings, earrings and money that had been confiscated were
not returned, Ms. Heigl and some other detainees assert.
Many detainees say they felt relieved when they got to the regular
prison. There, they had cots with sheets, and three meals a day. Ms.
Heigl received a message from her parents.
They had been contacted by German authorities one day after the raid.
Her father, Wunibald Heigl, a high-school history teacher in Munich,
says the German authorities hadn't called to provide help but to find
out as much as possible about his daughter. "We called the German
consulate in Milan and were coldly told that everything was going
according to procedures," Mr. Heigl says. The German foreign ministry
had no comment on the raid, saying it was a subject of bilateral talks.
Detainees say they were given consular access for the first time on
Wednesday or Thursday, except for U.S. citizens, whose diplomats visited
them hours after the school raid. The detainees were also taken before
judges but not allowed to speak to an attorney beforehand.
All were charged with "aggravated resistance to arrest" and "membership
in an armed conspiracy to cause destruction." The raid confirmed this
membership, the police say. According to their report, youths inside
tried to block the entry gate and "engaged in scuffles" with the agents.
One allegedly tried to stab a policeman. At a news conference, police
displayed a small knife and a half-pierced protective jacket but
couldn't name the attacker.
Many protesters interviewed agree that some Black Block militants may
have been hiding inside the school. But they say that if present, these
militants were a minority and didn't advertise their affiliation.
Possible Motive
Local government officials say the center of the Black Block was
elsewhere. According to Marta Vincenzi, governor of the Genoa province,
200 to 300 militants had kicked nonviolent demonstrators out of a
province-owned gym next to the Martin Luther King High School in the
evening of July 19, breaking school furniture inside to fashion weapons.
Ms. Vincenzi and other provincial officials say they repeatedly called
police with requests to intervene, to no avail. Ms. Vincenzi theorizes
that in their raid at Diaz, "police tried to offset their initial excess
of tolerance with an excess of vendetta" at the school.
Material seized in the raid suggests the police missed their mark. The
police report said the school "was a place dedicated to the strategic
planning and material manufacturing, by all persons present inside, of
instruments to attack police forces." The chief evidence was two wine
bottles filled with flammable liquid plus hammers and nails taken from
the construction site on school premises. In addition, the police say
they confiscated 17 cameras, 13 swimming goggles, 10 Swiss army knives,
four spent tear-gas shells, three cellular phones, two thermos bottles
and a bottle of suntan lotion. The charges were presented to a team of
judges who decided to free all but one detainee.
Ms. Heigl was released on Wednesday evening. The police initially
decreed that she and the other 77 foreign detainees would be expelled
from Italy and barred for five years, but Italy later said the ban
didn't apply to EU citizens. Ms. Heigl's parents, who had driven to
Genoa to find their daughter, followed the police truck that carried her
and about 30 others to the Austrian border. There, those released were
put on a train to Munich.
Ms. Heigl now will resume work on her master's degree. Earlier this
year, she visited Peru to collect material for a thesis on the collapse
of democracy under Alberto Fujimori. She says her experience in Genoa
has given her a new appreciation of the fragility of civil liberties: "I
realize now I didn't have to go all the way to Peru to do my studies."
-- Alessandra Pugliese contributed to this article.
add your own comments