Outrage forces probe of G8 brutality

STEVE BOGGAN reports on growing anger at the handling of protests at the G8 Summit.

LONDON - The Italian Government bowed to international pressure yesterday to look into "fascist" behaviour by its police force, as protesters arrested at the G8 summit in Genoa left with accounts of torture and brutality.

Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, said he had been given assurances "at the highest level" that complaints by Britons would be investigated.

Across the Continent reports emerged of protesters being beaten, tortured and deprived of their legal rights. One German politician likened the police's behaviour at the summit to the old military junta in Argentina. An Italian senator claimed the force had been infiltrated by fascists.

One of four returning British protesters, Norman Blair, said there was a frightening political dimension to the way in which activists were held for days without legal representation or consular visits.

He said that officers, some in plain clothes and wearing masks, would ask protesters: "Who is your Government?" Those that answered anything other than "the police" were beaten.

"It was terrifying," he said. "It was how I imagined Chile under Pinochet. There was no sense of any kind of legal process. It was as if there were no safeguards to ensure we came out alive. I honestly feared for my life."

The Britons, Blair, aged 38, from Newport, Daniel McQuillan, 35, and Richard Moth, 32, both from north London, and Nicola Doherty, 27, arrived in Britain yesterday after being released without charge on Thursday. A fifth, Mark Covell, 33, from London, was still in hospital in Genoa with broken ribs, a punctured lung and internal bleeding.

They were arrested during a police raid on a school acting as the headquarters of the non-violent Genoa Social Forum, where demonstrators were sleeping in the early hours of Sunday local time. Of 93 people arrested during the raid, more than 60 needed hospital treatment.

Witnesses have spoken of extreme brutality by officers, but there has been no formal complaint from the British Government. Neither the Prime Minister nor Jack Straw has condemned the police behaviour. But Straw said yesterday: "We have spoken to the Italian Administration at the highest level and they have agreed that these allegations will be fully investigated as part of the wider investigation into police malpractice by the Genoa Public Prosecutor.

"We have made it clear to the representatives of those who are making these allegations that if we receive details we will make sure they are received by the Italian Government and properly dealt with."

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition resisted calls for an inquiry into the police handling of the protests, but there was a fresh call for an investigation into an alleged fascist infiltration of the police force.

Italy's Foreign Ministry said that so far it had not received official protests from foreign Governments.

Fransisco Martone, a Green Party Senator representing Genoa, said: "We have heard stories about policemen singing fascist hymns and threatening people with rape and with further violence, and we do think this behaviour has no place in a democratic society."

An Italian judicial source told Reuters that prosecutors were looking into possible charges of assault, bodily harm and abuse of office by police on activists detained in jails.

Interior Minister Claudio Scajola, on a visit to Genoa, said the Genoa Social Forum headquarters could not have remained outside normal jurisdiction, stressing police found there Molotov cocktails and items that could be used as weapons.

But he said inquiries would show if police acted correctly. "If any behaviour [by the police] failed to correspond with the rules, it will be treated with maximum severity," Scajola said.

Genoa police chief Gianni De Gennaro also said individual officers would be punished if they had committed abuses.

About 1500 people marched through central Paris to protest against police brutality at Genoa and to demand an international inquiry into the violence.

There was criticism of the Italian police in the German, Spanish and French press. Hans-Christian Strobele, a senior Green Party politician in Germany, said: "I've seen boys with their heads broken and fear in their eyes. They all speak about an aggression from police forces. There has been mistreatment in police stations which reminds me of depictions of Argentina during the military dictatorship"

Italian news agency ANSA quoted Stroebele as saying some European Union citizens were taken to the border and effectively expelled.

"If they are EU citizens, why are they being deported? What is Europe going to do when the rights of its citizens are violated?"

At Heathrow Airport yesterday, the freed activists described being beaten and taken to a holding centre where they were deprived of food and sleep for 36 hours, made to stand spread-eagled for hours on end and laughed at when they asked for legal help.

Describing the raid, McQuillan, who suffered head injuries and a broken wrist, said: "It was terrible - we could hear the screaming and beating going on. We were grown-up people hiding under desks. There were five or six policemen and one struck me on the head. I rolled on to the floor and they continued beating us."

Speaking to the BBC from his hospital bed, Covell described being beaten in the street while trying to run away: "I ran smack into a carabinieri. I didn't stand a chance. I was immediately hit over the head.

"Then about 10 policemen proceeded to hit me non-stop for about five minutes, kicking me, punching me, hitting me with their batons and their shields. There was no mercy.

About 50 carabinieri charged past me ... As they did that, each one came running past and kicked me. For a time it was just endless. I really thought I was dying. It's a horrible thing when you hear your bones breaking inside you."