G8 protest martyr branded a 'junkie'

A mass of red flowers, a yellow hard hat and a camping stove, its gas lit as an "eternal flame", marked the stretch of Genovese tarmac where Carlo Giuliani was shot dead.

Within hours of his death from two gunshots to the head and body, the site on the Piazza Alimonda had became an impromptu shrine to the first martyr for Europe's militant anti-capitalist demonstrators.

His blood had been washed away. Yet for the tens of thousands of anarchists and eco-activists gathered for the G8 summit, Giuliani, 23, an unemployed squatter, was already a revolutionary hero. A red bandana with Che Guevara's likeness tied to the barrier around the site read: "Hasta la victoria... siempre" or "Until the victory... for ever".

The Italian media, however, were less clear about Giuliani's status. La Repubblica, the respected newspaper from the young man's home city of Rome said his thin, spreadeagled corpse lay "like a Christ with arms lying open on the asphalt".

The Communist Liberazione newspaper ran the headline "The G8 assassin" over a picture of the carabinieri who shot Giuliani with a Beretta pistol at point-blank range.

The financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore described the demonstrators as "hooligans" bent on organising "a veritable guerrilla war" in the city.

Giuliani's life story seemed to fulfil press stereotypes. Although police took seven hours to identify him, he had a record dating back to 1995, including a conviction for driving under the influence of drugs and for public order offences, and faced pending charges, including illegally possessing arms.

Giuliani came from a family of respected Communist trade unionists who moved from Rome to the city's Righi district.

His father, Giuliano, also presents a local television show on labour issues. He insisted that his son was non-violent. "Carlo could not put up with injustices; he was a peaceful boy, never violent."

But the TV channel owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the right-wing Italian Prime Minister, branded him a "junkie".

The unnamed policeman who shot Giuliani is aged 20, three years younger than his victim, and is now lying in a hospital and facing manslaughter charges.

Italy's interior minister, Claudio Scajol, claimed the officer probably acted in self-defence.

Photographs show Giuliani, his head sheathed in a blue woollen balaclava, swinging a fire extinguisher towards him through a smashed window in his police vehicle.

- INDEPENDENT