The case against the samba player from Turin, who had been accused of three counts of
assaulting a police officer, was dropped today due to police ineptitude. The police
officer who had brought the case against the activist had typed the wrong date in his
memo (6/2/2004 rather than 6/1/2004), and so none of the police witnesses turned up!
Quite rightly, the presiding magistrate rebuked the police for gross incompetence, and
when it was pointed out that the defendant and several witnesses had come from Italy for
the trial (as well as UK witnesses having travelled from Edinburgh and Northern England),
he dropped all three charges and abandoned the case.

There is no doubt that the large number of defence witnesses helped convince the
magistrate (who was already visibly annoyed at police incompetence, which he must get
a lot of) that the case should be dropped. Solidarity is our weapon!

Matt