*New Genoa G8 video* The Diaz raid, July 2001

(ANSA) - Rome, June 14 - Italian MPs called on Thursday for a fresh parliamentary inquiry into a violence-marred 2001 international summit in Genoa after a top policeman changed his testimony and said the police brutality he had witnessed against anti-globalisation protesters was "carnage".

The Italian Communists' Party (PDCI) and the Greens, two parties in Premier Romano Prodi's centre-left governing coalition, said a parliamentary commission of inquiry was a "moral duty" after hearing the account given by Michelangelo Fournier, the former deputy chief of Rome's flying squad.

Fournier is one of 29 policemen on trial over a night raid on a school used as sleeping quarters by protesters during the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001.

Breaking with his former version of events, Fournier told the court on Wednesday that he arrived at the school when the raid was already under way and saw police "beating harmless people" including some already seriously injured.

He said he saw one female protester lying inert on the floor in a pool of blood and being beaten with batons by four policemen.

"I was terrified and stunned when I saw this girl lying on the floor with her head split open and surrounded by blood... I thought she was dying, especially when I saw what I thought looked like spatterings of brain matter around her," Fournier said.

He said he immediately put a stop to the beating and ordered ambulances for the girl and the other injured.

Fournier said he had lied in earlier testimony and that his conscience had prompted him to now tell the truth.

"I kept quiet out of a sense of shame but also loyalty. I didn't want to bring discredit on the force by revealing such serious conduct. I'm a policeman and I came from a police family - I was born in a barracks. I have carried this cross (of silence) for six years," he said.

The raid took place on the night of July 21, 2001 when some 150 police in riot gear burst into the Diaz school and arrested 93 protesters including British, French, German and other non-Italian nationals. Most of the demonstrators were beaten during the operation, some seriously, and 63 had to be taken to hospital. Three people were left comatose, including a freelance British journalist, Marc Covell.

Covell was unconscious for 14 hours and left with a vein twisted around his spine, a shredded lung, broken fingers, ten smashed teeth and eight broken ribs.

The police defendants, among them several high-ranking officers, face a range of charges, including assault, causing grievous bodily harm, professional misconduct, falsifying evidence and defamation.

More than 300,000 demonstrators converged on Genoa for the G8 summit.

During two days of subsequent mayhem, one protestor was shot dead while attacking a Carabinieri policeman, shops and businesses were ransacked and hundreds of people injured in clashes between police and demonstrators.

According to protesters inside the Diaz school, they were brutally attacked by the police for no reason.

The police instead maintain that the protesters were harbouring dangerous weapons and resisting arrest and that they were forced to defend themselves.

All charges against the demonstrators were subsequently dropped while the police stand accused of planting evidence against them including two molotov cocktails and falsely accusing them of violence.

The court was told in January that the molotov cocktails had "accidentally" been destroyed. Several policeman are under investigation in connection with their disappearance.

2001 PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY EXONERATED POLICE.

A 2001 parliamentary inquiry into the Genoa violence exonerated the police on charges of having used excessive force but stressed that magistrates were entitled to investigate any individual instances of alleged brutality.

On the school raids, the commission said its inquiries had shown the "legitimate behaviour of the police force" despite "certain defects in the co-ordination on a decision-making and operational level".

Critics at the time accused the then government of centre-right chief Silvio Berlusconi of a whitewash.

The PDCI and the Greens said on Thursday they would present a bill requesting the new inquiry.

"We owe it to those young men and women who were treated like criminals and beaten to a pulp... We have to find out who gave the orders for such ferocious action against harmless protesters," they said.

Support for the inquiry was expressed by other members of Prodi's nine-party alliance.

Euro MP Vittorio Agnoletto, an anti-globalisation activist who played a leading role in the Genoa protests, commented: "Finally, after six years, a policeman has found the courage to tell the truth and confirm what we have always known, that the raid on the school was a real bloodbath".

The trial into the Diaz school case began in April 2005.

A separate trial is under way in which 45 state officials, including police officers, prison guards and doctors, have been charged with physically and mentally abusing demonstrators held in a detention centre in the nearby town of Bolzaneto.

Nearly 250 activists say they were spat at, verbally and physically humiliated and threatened with rape.

ROME (AP) — Premier Romano Prodi came under widespread criticism Thursday for announcing the departure of Italy's police chief just hours before it emerged he was being investigated in connection with alleged police misconduct during the 2001 G-8 summit.

During a briefing to parliament Wednesday, Prodi said Police Chief Gianni De Gennaro would be replaced when his seven-year term ends later this month.

Only later did news emerge that Prodi had been informed a few days ago that De Gennaro had been placed under investigation for allegedly pressuring a witness into changing his testimony on the conduct of police( the Diaz trial) during the G-8 meeting.

De Gennaro's lawyer said the accusations were pure conjecture and the witness denied being pressured, news reports said.

During the July 2001 summit, clashes broke out between some of the 100,000 anti-globalization protesters who ransacked parts of Genoa and thousands of police deployed to keep order. One demonstrator was killed.

Investigators are looking in particular into allegations that police used excessive force after a raid on the Diaz school housing demonstrators.

De Gennaro was police chief at the time, and for years had largely escaped personal criticism of his handling of the summit while Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who hosted the meeting, was in power.

The decision to replace De Gennaro had been taken months ago, news reports said.

But Prodi's announcement Wednesday surprised some in the ruling coalition and outraged the center-right opposition, which claimed that Prodi was bowing to the whims of leftists in his coalition by sacrificing De Gennaro for other political gains.

Prodi's own infrastructure minister, Antonio Di Pietro, said it was appropriate that a police chief in post for seven years be replaced. But he criticized the timing and the way in which the announcement was made.

Announcing De Gennaro's exit just as news emerged of the G-8 investigation implied that he was being removed because of the investigation, which was not the case, Di Pietro said, according to the ANSA news agency.

Maurizio Gasparri, of the center-right National Alliance opposition party, said Prodi was sacrificing De Gennaro to placate the leftists in his coalition who are holding up negotiations over bitterly contested pension reforms.

"He's having a tough time with the radical left, and to placate their economic anxieties he is offering up Police Chief De Gennaro like a sacrificial lamb," ANSA quoted Gasparri as saying.

The incident was particularly galling to the opposition which is still incensed over the government's removal of the head of the tax police, who was placed under investigation in a bank takeover probe.

"I ask myself if after getting their hands on all the institutions, they want to take over all those that aren't under their direct control," like the Carabinieri, Berlusconi quipped sarcastically, ANSA reported.

 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-21-italy-police_N.htm