Just to remind everyone:

Marcus \"Sky\" was at the door of the GSM building when police turned up, and was one of the first to be beaten up, with one police holding him at the neck while the others beat him with clubs. He was left unconscious in the streets in a pool of blood.

Police seized knives (they forgot the forks in the tray), wooden and metal bars from the scaffolding outside the house, black T-shirts (which definitely is a proof of membership of the much-diffamed Black Block), gas masks and motorcycle helmets.

But read what the Mail writes:

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DAILY MAIL MONDAY JULY 23, 2001-07-23 by Lucie Morris


Graduate could be jailed for five years

ARMED GUARD ON BRITON WHO LED RIOTERS (Full page headline)


A Briton was under armed guard in an Italian hospital last night, accused of helping to mastermind the bloody Genoa riots.

Mark Covell, 33, was arrested at the protestor’s HQ.

The freelance web-designer is said to have been in charge of computer systems used to co-ordinate attacks on the G8 summit by anarchist groups and could face five years in jail.

He is suffering from a collapsed lung, broken ribs and internal bruising after being beaten by police when he was arrested.

The sociology graduate, who lives in a tiny flat on a West London council estate, is known to British police and was arrested during the May Day riots in London for possessing cannabis.

He was in Prague last November, when a World Bank/ IMF summit night, was hit by violence. Last night, breathing with the help of an oxygen mask, he said: \"I was treated like a human football. It was against 400 police and they kicked me for 20 minutes along the road. I thought I was going to die.\"


His widowed mother Janet, 60, a retired bank clerk who lives in Reading, said she had gone ‘numb’ when she heard of her son’s arrest. \"You always dread a phone call like that,\" she said. \"I am very disappointed with him; he really has gone off the rails.\"

(caption: \"My son has really gone off the rails this time.\")


Covell, one of seven Britons in custody in Genoa last night, was among scores of protestors who clashed violently with police at a school being used by protest groups.

Officers seized weapons including knives, wooden and metal bars, gas masks and motorcycle helmets.

Italian police say Covell, whose father was a civil servant at the Defence Ministry, told them he was a freelance journalist.

But they believe he was using his computer skills to help the Genoa Social Forum, the umbrella organisation for some 700 groups from all over the world involved in the weekend demonstrations.

The Forum is said to have organised battle tactics for the rioters. Covell could be charged with conspiracy to violent rioting.

The clashes throughout the summit left one protestor dead, shot by police, more than 50 people injured and 200 arrested.


The other six Britons in custody were named by Italian police as Nicola Doherty, 27, John Blair, 19, from Larne, County Antrim, Richard Moth, 33, Daniel McQuallan, 30, Lawrence Miles, 25, and Jonathan Blair, 38.

Moth and Doherty, from London, are members of the anti-globalisation group Globalise Resistance, which claimed last night that they were taking part in a peaceful march when they were beaten by police and arrested.

The pair, who are support workers for people with learning disabilities, had gone to Genoa as representatives of the public service union Unison. The British Embassy in Rome said it was waiting to gain access to them.

More than 90 protestors were arrested in the raid on the school and 61 were taken straight to hospitals. Police claimed they had been injured earlier, but the protesters claimed they were attacked during the raid and journalists saw fresh bloodstains at the school.

Covell was unconscious when he was brought to the St Martino hospital, when he was guarded by four armed police last night. His condition was said to be ‘stable’.

His face and body covered in bruises and grazes, he insisted he had done nothing wrong, and said: \"I want the police to be arrested.

\"There are lots of my friends who are missing or are arrested, I am very worried for them and I know they probably think I’m dead. I didn’t deserve this.\"

At the house where he grew up, in the village of Burghfield Common, his mother described Covell as a \"social misfit\" ho \"enjoyed the drama\" of protests which he had been attending in Britain and abroad for two years.

She said: \"I would not describe him as violent but he has always been very rebellious. I am shocked that he was even in Genoa, let alone lying in a hospital bed.

\"Of course I am really worried about him, but I have never approved of his involvement in his socialist ideals and because of that we don’t really speak very often.\" Mrs Covell said her son had been \"terribly upset\" by the death of his father, Bill, eight years ago.

\"He became a very odd creature after that,\" she said. \"He got in with protestors and has spent a lot of time involved in that\".

Mrs Covell described her son as a \"bit of a loner\". \"As a child he was very much a home bird – he liked the outdoor life and loved cycling,\" she said.

As a boy, Mark as fascinated by the Navy and was a member of the Sea Cadets. At 15 he went to a Naval boarding school in North Wales for a year, but decided the Navy was not for him. He left home for London barely a year later.

\"After that I hardly saw him,\" said Mrs Covell. \"He was always the type who made up his mind he was going to do something and did it.\"

Covell lives in a one-bedroom flat, in Queen’s Park, West London.

The front door to the scruffy redbrick block has paint peeling away and the back of the building is daubed with graffiti. Signs on the property warn ‘Anti-climb paint – City of Westminster’.

Last night a friend who was flatsitting claimed he did not know Covell was in Genoa.

He said, \"It is a shock to hear he has been hurt. I did not know that he got involved in these protests.

\"I am against globalisation too, but I do not get involved in riots.\"

The friend, who said the two met when Covell designed a website for a film he was directing, added:: \"He is a hard-working guy, a good man.\"

Only last week another Briton, librarian Paul Robinson, 32, from north London, appeared in courts in Gothenburg for his part in riots at the EU summit last month.

Photo captions:

(Front page) The ‘mastermind’: Mark Covell at a family wedding

Masked face of hate: a protester emerges from the mob and hurls a missile at the security forces on Saturday.

Janet Covell: \"I am shocked\"

Covell as a baby with his sister Jane.

Smiling schoolboy: Mark Covell at the age of seven.\"