Two policemen convicted of the G8 events in Genoa in 2001 were promoted

The two officials are Pietro Troiani and Salvatore Gava, both definitively condemned for their role in the violence of the G8 in Genoa in 2001, but reinstated as early as 2017

(photo: Ares Ferrara via Wikimedia Commons ) On 28 October, the Minister of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese and the head of the State Police Franco Gabrielli decided to promote two agents definitively convicted for the violations of human rights committed against the demonstrators of the G8 in Genoa to the position of deputy commissioner of 2001. The two officials are Pietro Troiani and Salvatore Gava, both sentenced to 3 years and 8 months of detention together with 5 years of interdiction from public office. Troiani had introduced two Molotov cocktails into the Diaz school to give substance to the alibi of the "Mexican butchery" blitz brought by the police (that is, that the demonstrators were preparing for acts of violence), while Gava had falsely attested to the discovery. in order to stage "a justification for the bloody raid on the building and a reconstruction to be provided to the media", as reported by Amnesty International Italia on its website.

The assault by the police on the Diaz school was one of the bloodiest episodes of the violence committed by the police against the anti-globalization demonstrators who gathered in the city of Genoa between 19 and 22 July 2001 , to express their dissent during the G8 summit, the meeting of the heads of government of the 8 main industrialized countries of the world. Hundreds of people were beaten and tortured at the hands of the officers, who carried out illegal searches and mass arrests. The Court of Auditors called the night of the raid on the Diaz school an effect of the "sleep of reason", and even the European Court of Human Rights in 2015 unanimously declared that at the time the police violated the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatments.

The issue of identification numbers for law enforcement agencies

Amnesty director general Gianni Ruffini said that "it is disconcerting that police officers convicted of human rights violations remain in service and, indeed, are promoted to further positions ”, adding that it is episodes like this that undermine the relationship of trust between citizens and the police. Although Gabrielli had publicly admitted that in Genoa "there was torture", in fact, already in 2017 he had decided to reinstate the agents, assigning them top positions: respectively, Troiani became manager of the Rome and Lazio Highways Operations Center, while Gava was made Head of the Joint Liaison Office of the Service for International Police Cooperation (SCIP) in Albania. Other colleagues involved in the Genoa events in 2001 also suffered the same lucky fate of total reinstatement after the (few) sentences received.

In addition to the "constant absence of legislative remedies", Ruffini also traces the problem of police violence to the lack of identification codes for the police, a measure that Amnesty International Italia has been invoking for years to trace the material perpetrators of human rights violations such as that of Genoa in 2001. The request posed by a petition of the NGO, in fact, is to display an alphanumeric identification code on the uniforms and helmets of police officers and officers (without distinction of and grade) engaged in public order operations.