Skip to content or view screen version

Report on police raid in Genoa

Kieran | 27.07.2001 00:53

Witness statement about raid on GSF/imc offices and school opposite written from inside the imc, Sunday night.

This is the witness account I wrote on Sunday morning about the raid on the GSF. Sorry to publish it so late. Hope it maybe of some use:

I was at the media centre to have a meeting with
the pink block about holding some kind of demonstration today for prisoners
and the man that died. It finnished and then I just hung around a little
chatting to people. Around 11.30 (I think) we heard shouting from outside
and ran inside the building, as we had been in the garden. We shut the
doors and attempted to erect barricades. Like everyone I was terrified.
More noise was comming from outside and we began to feel the sting of tear
gas. I was with a group on the bottom floor, in the press room (the room
I'm in now). We heard the police smash their way in and we moved to the back
of the room and tried to remain clam. Three police entered the room, in
amour and wearing vandannas but without gas masks. Silence. Then they
asked if we would like to go outside - we said no. They did not attack us
or even threaten us. I still do not know why they did not beat us.
Apparently some people were beaten on the first floor and later I did see a
lot of injured people walking round but can not say whether they were from
the school or here. Anyway they left us alone to search the building. I
stayed in the imc press room with about 20 others. we rang touti bianchi
and they rang the media. Soon there were a lot of media here. shouting and
screaming continued from outside. Tear gas dissapated. People began to
shout from the imc "assanni" and "bastardo" at the row of riot cops outide.
I ran to the fourth floor and saw the ambulances picking people up from the
school from there.
Eventually the police left. Protesters including lawyers and the
media went into the school. In side there are pools of blood in many
different places - on the ground floor, on the stairs and on the first
floor.
Now there are around a 500 people sleeping in the imc as they feel
safest here. Lots of people have come from the Calini stadium where touti
biachi were staying as they believed they would be the police's next target.
In this room that I am typing from there are a hundred odd people sleeping
and then ten of us on the computers and phones trying to get the message
out. It is now half seven in the morning.

Kieran
- e-mail: kieran_oberman@hotmail.com