Dangers Of Dissent

At the infamous 2001 Genoa G8 summit, the world was stunned when a young protestor was shot dead by police, but only recently did the rest of the ugly story emerge. In one especially vicious event, Italian police raided a school being used as a temporary dormitory by international demonstrators and independent media. Claiming two petrol bombs had been found in the school and that an occupant had tried to stab an officer, police charged into the school and proceeded to smash windows, computers and heads in a gruesome attack that injured 72 occupants, many seriously. Bystanders kept outside the school during the prolonged raid reported hearing spine-chilling screams and then seeing the battered bodies carried out on stretchers.

What happened later is significant. Of the 93 inside the school arrested by the police that night, all were later released without charge. Then just last January, a full year and a half after the brutality, it emerged that the Italian police had in fact planted the petrol bombs at the school, and the officer who claimed to have been stabbed had in fact lied.