Subject: Amnesty worried about detained G8 protesters

By Raffaella Malaguti
ROME, July 24 (Reuters) - Amnesty International urged Italy on Tuesday to respect the rights of protesters detained during demonstrations at a Group of Eight summit last weekend and to allow them access to lawyers and relatives.
The London-based international human rights organisation said some foreign nationals arrested during the summit in the Italian city of Genoa had not yet been able to contact their consulates, lawyers or families.
"Amnesty is concerned about the lack of access to consulates and lawyers and we call on Italian authorities to immediately ensure the rights of the people deprived of their liberty in the last two days of the G8 are enforced," Amnesty's Western Europe researcher Nerys Lee told Reuters in Rome by telephone.
More than 200,000 people took the streets in Genoa during the G8 summit, but a core of activists bent on violence clashed with police and caused millions of dollars of damage.
One protester was shot dead and more than 230 people were injured during two days of violence. Police arrested 280 protesters, many of them foreign. "In particular, two UK nationals still can't contact anybody. We know they
are in detention but up to this morning nobody appeared to know where they were," Lee said.
Lee said Amnesty had also received phone calls from concerned relatives of protesters from Germany and knew of other similar cases involving Britons.
Amnesty has also expressed concern at the circumstances in which anti-globalisation protester Carlo Giuliani, 23, was killed during a confrontation between demonstrators and police on Friday.
Amnesty said on Sunday Italian authorities should institute a thorough review of training and deployment of law enforcement officers.
The centre-left opposition called for the resignation of Interior Minister Claudio Scajola, a senior figure in the conservative Forza Italia party led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, accusing the police of brutality
against peaceful protesters.
Scajola told parliament on Monday that Italian police forces had acted with professionalism in Genoa, and had the government's full support.
Genoa prosecutors have opened an investigation against the 21-year-old carabinieri officer alleged to have fired the shots which killed Giuliani.