from “il Manifesto” – Sunday 6 october 2002

G8 the stone rescues Placanica
Pisapia’s arguments rejected, dismissal in view for Carlo Giuliani’s murder

Mario Placanica, the carabiniere investigated for Carlo Giuliani’s murder at Genoa in july 2001 can finally see dismissal at hand. Public Prosecutor Silvio Franz has closed the enquiry, he will be waiting ten more days should a deposit of memories come up, then the case will be over. Everyone now expect a request for a non-suit grounded on the reconstruction of events made by the experts appointed last february. According to them, Placanica’s bullet, initially high directed, shot Carlo only because it ricocheted off a flake of dry plaster that the demonstrators threw at the carabinieri’s jeep. Despite having been questioned by the Giuliani’s experts who ground their arguments on the short films made in P.za Alimonda, this amazing result seems to convince the PP Franz. We’ll see then, at the end of the month, if the judge will also dwell on the self-defence and on the circumstance that Placanica could hardly see Carlo. That, in other words, from the position he occupied on the back of the jeep, the young soldier cannot have aimed at Carlo, who appeared to him- the experts write- as a shadow.
Yesterday confrontations between both the Giuliani and the PP experts ended well for Placanica. “There have been no turns of events” says one of those who were present at the 4 hours debate between the PP and the experts. The only objections to the argument of a stone-killer which helps in exculpating Placanica, were raised from the experts appointed by Giuliano Pisapia, Giuliani’s lawyer. In their work they started from the three short films available and analysing the scene from different perspectives. And they’ve reached different conclusions from those of the PP’s experts: firstly, the ‘offending’ stone breaks against the jeep one instant after the shot and leaves a mark on the jeep’s roof; secondly, the moment of the shot is identifiable thanks to two red stains that appear first on the balaclava near the cheekbone and then on Carlo’s nape of the neck, that is in correspondence to the entry and exit holes; thirdly the noise of the mortal shot was recorded from the telecamera late as to the image. Other objections relate to the distance between Carlo and the jeep: the PP’s experts claim it was 1,75 assuming that Carlo made a step forward compared with the image in which he was 3 meters far from the jeep; according to Pisapia’s experts Carlo’s head was at the same distance until the moment when the red stain appears. Yet, all objections were rejected by the PP’s experts and the PP seems to believe in their reconstruction of the events. Prof. Balossino, the informatics lecturer who analysed the short films, claims that the red stains are not blood but simple reflections, and indeed they are visible also in the vicinity of other people. Same story for the impact of flake of dry plaster on the jeep roof: according to the Giuliani’s experts it has left a mark, according to the PP’s experts this cannot be demonstrated. As to the sound, Prof. Balossino claims that the telecamera was very close (35-40 meters) so it recorded the shot at the same time as the image.
The experts from both parts are distinguished professionals, and if they reached such different conclusions is also because they’ve been working with different methods: Pisapia’s experts taking the videos images as starting point, the PP’s ones starting from a series of material elements that pushed them to assume a deviation of the bullet, and blame the flake of dry plaster. Indeed, it came out that the bullet was torn, so much as to cause unusual holes and leave a fragment in Carlo’s skull, and that in the balaclava there were remains of building material and of lead belonging to the bullet. The unusual breaking of the bullet was at an earlier time attributed to a bouncing off the extinguisher, and when this was excluded it come out the flake of dry plaster that one can see in the short films. Also, only in the final phase the PP’s experts analysed every single photogram, ending up by setting the shot after the appearance of the stains.