G8, from Giuliani to Diaz: 20 years ago in Genoa the days that marked Italy

The giants of the earth barricaded in the red zone. The city invaded by the anti-globalization people. One dead, hundreds of wounded. Twenty years later, in Genoa, the wound is still open. July 19, 2001: the G8 organization had attracted at least 300,000 demonstrators to the city, in a completely militarized city. And what was supposed to be an international summit turned into one of the darkest pages in recent Italian history. On the one hand there are the world leaders gathered in the “Fortress”. Meanwhile, on the streets it is chaos. The peaceful demonstration soon degenerates. The charges of the rapid transform Genoa into a theater of war. The violence in the streets culminates with the death of Carlo Giuliani. And in the night the “Mexican butcher” begins. First the raid on the Diaz School, then the violence at the Bolzaneto barracks. Antagonists, but also Catholic associations. The no-global people are varied. And already the first demonstrations against the G8 are characterized by great participation. The first demonstrations take place without major incidents, unlike what will happen in the following days. There is still hope for the maintenance of public order, despite the signs of unrest at the summit. The images of the G8 in Seattle, brought into focus two years earlier, represent a wake-up call for those called to manage public order. For this the city center is armored with an impassable fence. It is renamed the ‘red zone’ and will soon become the symbol of the limit to be crossed for demonstrators. On 20 July the ‘black suits’, the so-called black blocs, an expression practically unknown in Italy before the G8, appeared. These are antagonists from all over Europe, not only from Italy, who will put the city to fire and sword along with hundreds of protesters from the most extremist wing. In Piazza Alimonda the young demonstrator Carlo Giuliani, who has a fire extinguisher in his hands, dies after being hit by a pistol shot, exploded by the carabiniere Mario Placanica’s weapon from inside an armored vehicle stormed by demonstrators. The carabiniere, on leave since 2005, was investigated for murder and then acquitted for self-defense and legitimate use of weapons. Following the death of Carlo Giuliani, another parade is scheduled in Genoa. Also on this occasion the demonstration soon degenerates into very hard clashes between no global activists and the police forces. About 300 thousand people take part in the procession and the clashes continue throughout the afternoon between charges, tear gas and devastation. Around 11.30 pm the violent raid of the police forces inside the Diaz School, where the coordination of the Genoa Social Forum is located and where it is thought that some black blocs may have found refuge. After a violent beating, which will be defined during the trial that followed the events ‘a Mexican butcher’s’ by the assistant superintendent Michelangelo Fournier, all 93 people who slept inside the school were stopped and most of them transferred to the Bolzaneto barracks. Of the 63 injured, three are hospitalized on a confidential prognosis. For these facts, 25 policemen will be sentenced definitively (the sentence of the Supreme Court is of 5 July 2012). None of the defendants will end up in prison due to the statute of limitations, while some executives will have the additional penalty of being banned from public offices for five years for false aggravation, due to the various attempts to mislead the investigations, for example with the false discovery within the school of two Molotov cocktails. On the Diaz case there is also a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights of 7 April 2015, according to which the one perpetrated in the school was torture. The violence continues in the Bolzaneto barracks. Here the people taken from the Diaz school were held for one or two days, depending on the case, subjected to violence by both the police and medical staff. According to their accounts, the detainees were humiliated, beaten, threatened and deprived of the opportunity to meet their lawyers, as well as having suffered other forms of mistreatment.In June 2013, the Court of Cassation will definitively sentence 7 people and recognize compensation for damages to the victims despite the previous appeal verdict having declared the crimes charged to 37 defendants prescribed. On October 26, 2017, there will also be a ruling from the ECHR, which establishes that the events in Bolzaneto are also acts of torture, condemning Italy.