By John Phillips
ROME
The European Court of Human Rights has convicted Italian police of torturing anti-globalisation protesters arrested in a raid on a school on the fringes of a G-8 summit.
The Court in Strasbourg also condemned Italy on Tuesday for not specifically outlawing torture in its criminal code.
The violent assault on the Diaz school in Genoa in 2001 "must be classed as torture," said the Court, responding to an appeal submitted by Arnaldo Cestaro, one of the people who was at the school during the search carried out by police July 21, 2001, at the end of the G8 summit marred by violent protests during which police shot and killed a young protester.
Cestaro, aged 62 at the time of the incident, wrote that he was brutally beaten by police and consequently had to undergo surgery and was still in poor health as a result.
Cestaro, represented by lawyer Nicolò Paoletti, said the police responsible for what happened should have been adequately punished, but this had not happen as there was no crime of torture or the equivalent under Italian law.
European court judges accepted his submission.
The judges said Italian law should be changed and ruled that the lack of such a law on torture made it impossible for the Italian state to prevent repeats of such violence by police forces in Italy.
In Rome, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, said that a vote being held on Thursday to alter legislation and make torture a crime was made all the more important as a result of the European Court decision.
"Parliament finally is moving to fill a vacuum that the European judges, as well as many Italian citizens, also have considered intolerable," she said.
