Revisiting the Genoa G8 2001: Investigations & Documentation by The Legal Secretariat

by Carlo A. Bachschmidt

This is an extended translated transcript of Carlo A. Bachschmidt’s presentation at SMART PRISONS: Tracking, Monitoring & Control, 25 March 2023.

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Hello everyone, it is a pleasure to be here, I thank Tatiana for inviting me to the 29th Conference of the Disruption Network Lab. Today I will try to tell the story of one of the first instances of militant forensic investigation, which resulted from the events of the G8 in Genoa in 2001. I apologize, I will do my presentation in Italian, on the screen you can read the English translation. I hope you will still manage to follow with interest.

I am a Party Appointed Expert in criminal trials and a documentary maker. This professional experience began at the end of the 90s, when I actively took part in the constitution process of Genoa Social Forum, which coordinated the organizations that contested the Summit. It then continued with the Genoa Legal Forum, an informal group of lawyers engaged in the protesters' defense.

The G8 in Genoa

By the late 1990s, from Seattle to Gothenburg, from Prague to Naples, protests by movements against neoliberalism at international summits had become increasingly radical and participated, and the reaction of law enforcement more violent and resolute. From July 20 to 22, 2001, Genoa hosts the G8, the annual meeting of the world's eight richest countries. The Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, in the very center of the city, on the edge of the historic centre, has been chosen as location. Around the summit area a red zone is drawn where unauthorized persons are not allowed, and a yellow zone where most of the police forces are deployed.

The "red zone" has a perimeter of 20 kilometers and is protected by 5-meter-high iron fences. Access is possible through a few checkpoints, only for residents with a pass issued by Police Headquarters. Railway stations are closed. Brignole station operates only for special trains. Highway accesses, the harbour and the airport are closed. At the airport anti-aircraft batteries are installed against possible terrorist attacks. The Schengen Treaty, which provides for the free movement of European citizens across the borders of the European Union, is suspended. Public security authorities advise the Genoese to close businesses and leave the city. Genoa is virtually isolated from the rest of the world and under the most meticulous control by the police apparatus: 15.000 members of the Police Force and the Army are deployed to defend the "red zone". The Telecommunications Operations Center of the Genoa Police Headquarters, in addition to managing police radio communications and emergency calls, can rely in the operations room on very high-definition images from the many Police and Carabinieri helicopters and from traffic cameras.

The Genoa Social Forum

The counter-summit has been announced and prepared well in advance: in December 2000 a "Work Pact" is created, which later takes the name Genoa Social Forum, an international coordination of more than 1,000 organizations intending to demonstrate at the G8. The Genoa Social Forum has several public spaces in the city, all outside the "yellow zone": a media-center is set up in the Pascoli school, a reception space for protesters in the Diaz Pertini complex, an information and refreshment space in Piazzale Kennedy, a convergence center in Piazzale Martin Luther King, a debate space (Public Forum) in Punta Vagno, and several reception points, including a sports complex and a stadium to accommodate the many protesters arriving in Genoa. Monday, July 16 the Public Forum opens, an opportunity to voice the point of view of anti-globalization movements and demand a different model of development. Genoa 2001 represented for the whole movement the appointment on which to converge the various experiences of struggle produced by associations, social centers and unions: local struggles and global struggles in defense of common goods, bringing a radical critique of the development model and the processes of liberalist globalization, and a different vision of the relationship between North and South of the world.

«You G8 we six billion», is the Genoa Social Forum slogan.

The Genoa Social Forum also promotes three days of street demonstrations coinciding with the Summit: the migrants' march on Thursday July 19 takes place without incident. About 50,000 demonstrators take part on a route that winds its way from the limits of the "red zone"; Friday 20 is the day of direct actions on the occasion of the official opening of the Summit. Two marches and five "thematic squares" are planned. Saturday July 21 is the day of the united and international march closing the counter-summit.

The police authorizes these demonstrations and assigns each an officer in charge. On Sunday, July 22, the day after the summit closes, the outcome is dramatic. Firearms are used against protesters in Italy for the first time in two decades.

• 300,000 demonstrators took part in the counter-summit

• 15,000 law enforcement and military personnel deployed

• 6,125 tear gas canisters shot on July 20 and 21

• 1,000 injured (560 in hospitalized)

• 360 arrested

• at least 18 gunshots that could be counted

• 1 demonstrator killed

The picture emerging at the conclusion of the summit presented countless violations of national laws and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. High oints were the violence during the raid on the Diaz school and the torture in the Bolzaneto detention center, where constitutional rights were temporarily suspended. Several working groups were then formed on the main episodes in which legal assistance was being articulated. This "defense panel" was given the name Genoa Legal Forum.

The Genoa Legal Forum

After July 2001 I followed the vicissitudes of the first people arrested and kept in touch with the movement media, receiving hundreds of testimonies, photos and videos. I then decided to collect all the material being produced in those months so that it wouldn't be dispersed and could be used by the Genoa Legal Forum lawyers.

The participation of lawyers in the Genoa days of July 2001 began with the National Association of Democratic Jurists joining the Genoa Social Forum, followed by individual lawyers from all over Italy. The purpose was observation and monitoring of the situation during the days of protest against the G8 Summit. A volunteer from the Genoa Social Forum acted as a coordinator and reference between the lawyers and the Genoa Social Forum. Legal assistance was needed during the searches that preceded the Summit. The lawyers were in the streets during the demonstrations as qualified observers, and coordination and information service over the phone were carried out from the Media Center in Via Cesare Battisti, across the street from the Diaz school.

In January 2002, the secretariat of the Genoa Legal Forum was born. The lawyers involved decided to coordinate in order to ensure that all those who were imprisoned (465 people) and subject to legal proceedings would have an efficient defence, and to make possible for those who suffered violence (307 plaintiffs) and were denied their fundamental rights to shed light on personal and institutional responsibilities and to receive compensation for the damages they suffered.

The lawyers formed several working groups on the main issues: assistance to those under investigation, the raid on the Diaz School, the violence perpetrated in Bolzaneto, the arrests and beatings at demonstrations, the appeals against unjustified deportations and the ban on re-entry in Italy, and the events of Via Tolemaide and Piazza Alimonda leading to the killing of Carlo Giuliani.

Until 2004 I am the expert consultant (CT) carrying out the activity of analysis and archiving of all video-photographic and paper documentation related to the G8 days. From 2004 to 2008, about 10 people are engaged, all of them appointed CT, who follow the trials up to the 1st instance. From 2008 to 2011 I follow the trial phases of the Appeals and Cassation.

The Legal Secretariat

The Legal Secretariat supported the work of 150 lawyers in the defense of about 100 defendants and 300 plaintiffs, many of them foreigners. It made possible for the many Italian and foreign lawyers to stay in touch, have a common space where they could coordinate trial strategies, and share court documents and evidence the consultants analysed for the hearings.

The work of the Secretariat included:

• archiving and digitalizing all paper documents, photos and videos from the Public Prosecutor's Office;

• analysis of evidence to reconstruct the events;

• preparation of the hearings selecting the material to use to question witnesses;

• reception and assistance for foreign plaintiffs;

• expert testimonies on the analysis of videos, photos, audios and other evidence.

The activity of the legal secretariat was supported by several subjects, especially the Truth and Justice Committee for Genoa, Legal Support and the Piazza Carlo Giuliani Committee. The Truth and Justice Committee for Genoa is formed in 2002 to support the legal secretariat and the defense of all demonstrators, and promote events and information about the trials.

Legal Support is an informal group of activists from the Indymedia experience who in 2004, at the opening of the trials, have decided to support the secretariat, and promote events to inform about the trials. Some of them take part in the activity of the secretariat in the initial phase. The Piazza Carlo Giuliani Committee has raised funds and financially supported the legal secretariat until the final sentences. Help also came from solidarity groups in Germany and individual plaintiffs.

The documentation on the G8 consists of materials in different formats, which we archived for use in the trials. The archive consists of an audiovisual part (photos - video - audio) and a paper part (court documents - press review). It's about 1350 hours of video, 80,000 photos and 18,000 audio, including Carabinieri and Police radio communications, calls to police and medical emergency numbers, and live radio broadcasts from Radio GAP and Radio Popolare.

The documents come from two main sources, the investigation acts of the Genoa Public Prosecutor's Office, the trials of the three levels of justice, and the material collected by the Genoa Legal Forum. The most substantial part is the trial records. They are public and publishable documents.

The Genoa Legal Forum archive, on the other hand, must be treated as a private archive. It's largely videos (about 550 h) and photos (about 50,000) that follow copyright regulations. They come from European activist video makers, well-known film-makers and directors, national television operators and international news agencies. Finally, the press review (6275 articles in newspaper clippings) of major national and local newspapers from 2000 to 2011, collected in 46 folders.

The documents from the Genoa Public Prosecutor's Office are stored in 260 folders, with 18,000 audio (about 300 h), 250 VHS videotapes (about 800 h) including Police footage (helicopters, forensics, helmet cameras and road cameras) and 120 photographic exhibits (about 30,000 photos). As an example, the trial for "devastation and looting" is contained in 40 of the folders totalling 25,504 pages, 155 hearings, and 210 testimonies.

Of particular interest among the materials produced by the Genoa Public Prosecutor's Office are the records of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission that heard all the heads of Public Security, Local Authorities and government ministers. In addition to all the documentation on police training in public order, it was also possible to read the numerous reports from the two Italian intelligence services. Hundreds of notes and reports on the activities of some activists and the organization of street demonstrations. I recall the intelligence, sent to all top police officers, anticipating place, day and time the black bloc would meet to begin their direct actions on July 20.

The Trials

The Genoa Public Prosecutor's Office used many resources to start numerous trials against some 465 protesters and 194 police, carabinieri, and medical personnel.

Among the most important were the trials against the Police Forces for the raid on the Diaz school and the torture at the Bolzaneto barracks, in which 307 demonstrators were plaintiffs, and the trial against 25 demonstrators, charged with devastation and looting for two days of clashes.

By contrast, the trial for the events in Piazza Alimonda never took place. For the death of Carlo Giuliani, the Carabiniere Mario Placanica was investigated for omicide. The Judge for the Preliminary Investigations acquitted him ruling self-defense and lawful use of weapons. The expert report produced during the investigation established that the shot that killed Giuliani was fired upward, hitting a stone thrown by a protester and thus deflecting its trajectory reached Carlo Giuliani's face. This reconstruction has been disputed by the Giuliani family, who also sought to open an attempted murder trial for the smashing of Carlo's forehead that occurred after the shooting.

For the events at Diaz there were 29 defendants including police heads and officers: in first instance 16 were acquitted and 13 convicted of forgery, injuries, aggravated injuries in conspiracy, introduction of the Molotov cocktails into the school, and violation of the law on weapons. In the appeal trials, the convictions became 25, also of police heads who had been acquitted in the first instance. The Court of Cassation later confirmed the convictions. The Interior Ministry was ordered to pay compensations between 5,000 and 50,000 euros to each of the plaintiffs. In 2015, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy for the lack of a law against the crime of torture (introduced in 2017).

For the events at the Bolzaneto barracks, the absence of the crime of torture in the legal system led to only 15 convictions and 30 acquittals out of 45 defendants in the first instance trial, for other crimes such as abuse of office.

On appeal, there were 44 convictions, but many crimes were statute-barred. Finally, the Cassation Court issued 7 convictions and 4 acquittals. It confirmed the prescriptions and reduced the compensation due in civil cases. In 2017, 59 victims of beatings appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which ordered Italy to pay compensations to 48 people, while other 11 had withdrawn the appeal after reaching agreements with the state on compensation. In its ruling, the court pointed out that none of the perpetrators had served a single day in prison.

None of the police executives involved in the Genoa events suffered career setbacks. Those who left the police were appointed to important roles in public and private companies.

Twenty-five demonstrators were charged in the trial for devastation and looting. All were convicted with different sentences: thirteen for damages, one for injuries, ten for devastation and looting. In all, one hundred and ten years were imposed, with sentences ranging from six to fifteen years in prison.

1st Case: The trial against 25 demonstrators

The crime of "devastation and looting", introduced in the postwar period and never before contested for street clashes, was revived by the Genoa Public Prosecutor's Office for the G8 events of 2001.

The elements that integrate the crime are: undermining of public order and repeated damage to property, including through psychic co-participation among the defendants. In practice, it is not necessary to have actually "devastated," but it is sufficient to be present while others devastate.

The investigations that lead to the indictment of the demonstrators started immediately after the G8, almost exclusively thanks to images and videos from various sources, which were sent to all Italian Digos. They are 25 activists who had demonstrated in different street contexts during the days of July 20 and 21. 15 demonstrators had taken part in the authorized march "of the disobedient" that started from the Carlini stadium and should have arrived in Piazza Verdi, near the Brignole train station, but was violently charged by the carabinieri in Via Tolemaide.

The trial began in 2004, and in the hearings of the first two years Genoese citizens and many members of the Police Force present in Genoa were heard. Among the various police officers and carabinieri who took the stand, Primo Dirigente di Polizia Mondelli, Carabinieri Captain Bruno, and Dirigente di Polizia Gaggiano, who were called to testify mainly about the events of Via Tolemaide, were crucial for the defense's reconstruction. These witnesses provided the first complete reconstruction of the charge against the authorized §white-overalls" march.

Mario Mondelli was in charge of the contingent of carabinieri who charged the "disobedient" march, while Captain Antonio Bruno was the carabiniere who lead that contingent. It emerged from their testimony that the first charge against the march was an independent and sudden initiative of the carabinieri and not, as it had appeared until then, a decision of the person in charge of public order for that march, Dirigente di piazza Angelo Gaggiano.

A violent charge that hit first the many journalists who were at the intersection of Corso Torino and Via Tolemaide, and then the 10,000 people march that was peacefully advancing along an authorized route.

During the trials, the legal secretariat produced 3 videos on the reconstruction that emerged. The best known is OP Public Order, released in 2007. It's the reconstruction of the Carabinieri charge against the authorized "disobedient" march through the testimony in court of police officers of which we watch a short clip.

With the testimony of Capt. Antonio Bruno and through enlarged photos and videos, the lawyers prove that the carabinieri charged the demonstration using, along the normal batons, theblack tape.

Party Expert Reports

Besides the archiving work, since 2004 various memoirs and/or reports have been presented in court on the reconstruction of the events through: 500 hours of videos, 15,000 photos, hundreds of radio communications and phone calls, and the telephone traffic records of police forces (defendants in the Diaz trial).

As part of the preliminary investigation and during the trial, it may be useful to make use of the work of reconstructing the facts by processing a video montage in which images with different points of view but recording the same subject are captured. The peculiaritỳ of photographic video consultations lies mainly in reconstructing the temporal extent of different footage through metadata analysis, and then synchronizing them with each other so that they can be viewed simultaneously in a single, multi-quadrant video montage.

Some of the expert reports produced at the trial can be seen at youtube.com/ProcessiG8.

To better understand the usefulness of 4-quadrant editing, I present the case of the diaz trial that will be analyzed at tomorrow's workshop.

 2nd Case: The Diaz Trial

The Diaz schools complex consists of two buildings, which in July 2001 were assigned to the Genoa Social Forum to set up the media center (Pascoli school) and a communication and training center (Pertini), where various groups could coordinate and prepare their initiatives. The Pascoli school houses on the ground floor the press room and a gymnasium/infirmary, on the second floor the coordination rooms for legal and medical aid, and communication offices of the GSF, on the second floor Radio Gap and other movement newspapers, and on the third floor Indymedia. In the Pertini, the gymnasium is used as a training area. Some computers with public Internet access are installed. From Thursday, July 19, the Pertini becomes a dormitory for protesters who have found nowhere else to stay.

Through the week, dozens of media activists work at this facility, allowing various media workers to report on what was happening in Genoa. On Saturday, July 21, a few minutes before midnight, when the media center began to empty and many demonstrators were already sleeping at Pertini, about 300 police officers divided in two columns arrived from both sides of Via Cesare Battisti and moved to storm the two schools.

It is the so-called raid at the Diaz school where 93 people were brutally beaten and then arrested. For this fact, the Genoa Public Prosecutor's Office investigated 29 police officers.

The expert report produced at the Diaz trial, a four-quadrant video montage reconstructing the moment when police carried out the raid and when later they brought into Diaz the two Molotov cocktails that were initially recorded as exhibits found inside the school premises.

For the expert report it was necessary to analyze video/photographic documentation, live radio broadcasts, law enforcement radio communications, calls to police and medical emergency numbers, and telephone traffic records in order to reconstruct and describe the presence and movements of the defendants.

The video exhibits were in 2 formats: VHS (analog) and minidv (digital). VHS videos were duplicated and acquired in digital format. All exhibits were subsequently captured through Adobe Premiere software so that they could be displayed on the editing timeline. The major difference between the two formats lies in the recovery of the datacode, present only in the digital videos (minidv).

Next, the following operations were performed:

• Creation of the folder and exhibit number

• Count of the number of sequences through the datacode

• Identification of synchronizations between videos with datacode (minidv)

• Identification of sequences comparable with videos without datacode (VHS)

• Selection of the best sequences for the 4-quadrant video

• Choice of audio and red-border highlight on the video

Insertion of the timecode synchronized to the data of the edited videos.

So as to simultaneously view the different footage in a single video montage, we proceeded identifing synchronicity points between two, or more, footage by placing them on a timeline number corresponding to that of the operators. The temporal correspondence (synchrony) between the different recordings was found and verified in each video tracing the frames in which visually appreciable events stood out (e.g. camera flashes).

A similar operation was performed on the audios and they were consequently synchronized with the videos. For this purpose, it was decided to take a video from the Genoese tv station Primocanale (video no. 199) as the reference footage to determine the synchronization of the audio data. Thus, the datacode present in exhibit 199 was adopted as the timetable for the entire montage project.

The video montage was divided into 4 quadrants, reducing the size of the movies to view them simultaneously. The picture shows a screen shot of the editing project. Finally, the timecode was inserted in white, showing the time in hours, minutes, seconds and frames, set to the time of the first clip of the Primocanale video exhibit.

The video montage reconstructed the dynamics of the events that took place between 11:30 p.m. on July 21, 2001, and 4:00 a.m. on July 22, 2001, i.e. from the arrival of the defendants in via Cesare Battisti until the end of the search and their departure from piazza Merani.

In summary, the most relevant facts emerging from the visual reconstruction were:

• Objective description of the screams recorded during the initial phase of the raid, from a video framing the Diaz school from one side, and its synchronization with other footage of the front of the school.

• Overall duration of the initial phase of the raid, identification of the defendants who took part in it, description of the final stages of the beating of Mark Covell.

• Reconstruction and timing of the introduction of the Molotov bottles into the school.

The video you are about to see is an excerpt from the expert report, it's the initial stages of the raid, police entering the Diaz school.

At the end of the operation, police arrest all 93 people who were at the Diaz Pertini. Twenty-eight are admitted to various hospitals in the city. Most are taken to the Bolzaneto barracks. All 93 will discover only in jail or in hospital that they are charged with criminal conspiracy to commit devastation and looting, aggravated resistance and carrying weapons, precisely because of the molotov cocktails found in the school.

Only seven people, out of 93, leave Diaz physically unharmed. About 80 are injured. Five persons are in life-threatening conditions.

The Archive

In 2007 the processig8.org site was opened to make public the hearings of the main trials: devastation and looting, Diaz and Bolzaneto.

In addition to the expert expositions, the minutes, the transcripts and the audio recordings of the hearings, a vast audiovisual (photo - video - radio) and paper (bibliography - press review) documentation collected from 2001 to 2011 was available for consultation. The site was closed a few years after the Supreme Court ruling, and today all documentation is again available on the Piazza Carlo Giuliani Committee website.

Once the trials were over, I kept the papers, formally owned by some of the lawyers.

The subjects that supported the legal secretariat met several times in an attempt to set up a documentation center to follow up on all the work done.

The political differences of the proponents did not allow to start a common project. After the tenth anniversary in 2011, I then began to look for a location in Genoa, contacting the Archive of the Municipality of Genoa and the University of Genoa, so that the archive could be returned to the city, accessible for consultation.

Not having received any feedback of concrete interest, I decided to follow Haidi Gaggio Giuliani's advice and entrusted the folders of the trials' documents and the press review to the "Francesco Lorusso - Carlo Giuliani" Movement Documentation Center at VAG61 in Bologna.

Conclusions

The Genoa G8 can still today be studied beyond the "truth" written in the final sentences of 2012.

During the trials the modus operandi of police and carabinieri emerged clearly: on the one hand, the disorganization and lack of coordination in the management of public order, on the other, the intention to decisively oppose the demonstrators.

The work of the Genoa Legal Forum has made it possible not only to exonerate many protesters from the charges, but also to show a reconstruction of the facts very different from the one offered by Police. The material collected is still today an opportunity not only to look into the story of those days, but above all to learn more about the relationship that the various protagonists (demonstrators, law enforcement agencies, Genoese citizens) have established among themselves in a unique context: a political and social experiment that determined the beginning of the end of the movement of those years.