In the week that the London Metropolitan Police were found guilty of a series of errors that led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, members of Italy’s ruling coalition voted against holding a committee of enquiry into the conduct of policing at the G8 summitt in Genoa in 2001.
Two parties in particular brought voted, at committee level, to botch the proposed enquiry – Justice Minister Clemente Mastella’s UDEUR, and ex-magistrate Antonio Di Pietro’s Italia dei Valori. The move was a serious one, because – aside from everything else – both parties had signed a program for government that explicitly called for the setting up of the inquiry in question. Clemente Mastella’s ‘a la carte‘ approach to the program has been commented upon widely and frequently.
More perplexing has been Antonio Di Pietro’s position. Di Pietro made his name in the ’90s as one of the magistrates spearheading the ‘mani pulite‘ corruption cases, and is rarely seen off a pedestal arguing for transparency and justice. And yet he has, for the moment, effectively denied the country a chance to ask, and have answered questions about the disturbing events that led up to the shooting of one protester dead, along with mass arrests and police beatings.
Di Pietro, on his blog, tells us that he’s not against an inquiry, but rather he’s against a one-sided inquiry. For Di Pietro both the actions of the police and the actions of protesters need to be examined – and while the inquiry concerns itself solely with the conduct of the police, he votes against it.
Di Pietro has made a huge mistake though, as the issue of the inquiry is not one of ascribing guilt for the outbreak of violence that occured in Genoa. It’s not to point the finger, and claim ‘it was your fault, and your fault alone’.Who was to blame for intial outbursts of violence on the streets of Genoa during the G7 summitt is open to question, and certainly various violent protesters (amidst the vast majority of peaceful protesters gathered) hold a share of the responsibility. There are court cases still under way involving both protesters and police officers that will shed some light on this eventually.
A parliamentary inquiry into Genoa, though, has a very different function. It’s function is to examine the actions of the state. The simplest reason for this is that while violent protesters have no authority to act in our collective name, the police in their exercise of power are acting in our name, in the name of the state, and are paid for by us, the taxpayers. In a democracy the Police are answerable for their actions to the state. When they are not answerable to the state, in effect you have? Yep – a Police state.
The police in Genoa, in witnessed cases, beat unarmed protesters, destroyed camera footage from bystanders, refused to identify themselves and covered up id-badges. In the most notorious case, police stormed the headquarters of the Genoa social forum and beat protesters inside – of 96 people present in the building, 62 were hospitalised with injuries ranging from cracked ribs and broken bones, through to serious head injuries. Three of those hospitalised were in a coma. Police held a number of people, without charge, in a makeshift camp the Bolzaneto detention centre, where they were subjected to further violence – again at the hands of unidentifiable police officers.
A report from Italy’s chief prosecutor came to the conclusion that the Police “must have lied” in their version of events – including the claim that a police patrol had come under attack from the Social Forum’s building.
There are still questions to be answered about the police conduct – who ordered the raids; were police officers told to cover their identity badges; what plans were made prior to the meeting, and what level of political invovment was their with the plans.
When the people charged with enforcing state security act like ‘wild beasts'(the description of one police officer witnessing police beating students) the integrity of the state is threatened, and action must be taken to punish those responsible, and to ensure there exists no institutional short circuit that allows for such behaviour. Individual prosecutions therefore can’t take the place of a full-scale inquiry.
When a protester smashes a car, or attacks a police officer, the state’s response is simpler – they arrest and prosecute the offender. The integrity of the state doesn’t come into question.
Not that the British government have much of a record with the reports their inquiries produce, but at least they’ve got the concept of what an inquiry is for. For example, nobody blocked the report into the London Met’s behaviour in relation to Jean Charles Mendes by saying that the Met and Al Qaeda should both be investigated equally.