The announcement of the trial came at the conclusion of preliminary hearings during which it was claimed that police planted two Molotov cocktails they said they had found at the school. The claim by one senior police officer that an activist had tried to stab him was also discredited. All the activists arrested were released without charge. Five of the injured were British.

The 28 police were sent for trial on charges of abuse of authority, slander and involvement in severe damage, among other charges. All risk expulsion from the police force in addition to possible prison sentences.

Several of the officers who are to be tried have been promoted in the intervening two and a half years including Francesco Gratteri, who is now Italy's top anti-terrorism officer. The decision to send the officers for trial comes after an inquiry lasting three years, and nearly six months of preliminary hearings. The trial is scheduled to begin in April.

The G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001 was Silvio Berlusconi's international coming-out party as prime minister for his second term; among the leaders he welcomed to the elegant north-western Italian port city were Tony Blair, George Bush and Vladimir Putin. In Italy it was the high tide of the anti-globalisation movement, but Mr Berlusconi and his "post-Fascist" deputy Gianfranco Fini - now foreign minister - were determined to prove Italy's ability to ride out any disturbances.

By midnight on 21 July, after three days of violent and non-violent clashes, the circus appeared to be over.

But just after midnight, helicopters clattered over the Diaz school in the city, base of the Genoa Social Forum, which activists from all over Europe were using as a dormitory. A riot police squad from Rome burst into the school and began beating the terrified people sleeping inside it.

At a press conference after the raid, police said they had acted on a tip-off that Black Bloc activists were at the school. They showed off an array of weapons and implements - including hammers, knives, pickaxes and two Molotov cocktails in wine bottles - that they said they had found.

But the terrorised activists said they had been beaten mercilessly and without provocation. They told of police urinating on them, tearing out piercings with pliers, forcing a man with a wooden leg to remain standing for 24 hours. Of the 93 arrested, 62 were so badly hurt that they needed hospital treatment.

Eventually two police admitted to investigators that the stories told by their superiors were false. They said the two Molotov cocktails had been found in a different part of the city and planted in the school.