hydrarchist writes:

The True Story of Diaz school raid

by alessandro mantovani (trad by blicero, some further editing by hydrarchist)

The True Story of the Diaz School Raid

The responsibility of head police officers for the raid on the school emerge clearly from the latest investigations and interrogations of the attorneys in Genoa. The Roman riot police are responsible for 61 badly injured people, and leading officers are being hold responsible for perjury and providing false evidence - the fake molotov cocktails bottles "found" in the Diaz school: they all risk being kicked out of the police force. Two vicequestori brought them [the molotovs] to Caldarozzi and Luperi, vice-captains of the SCO [Servizio Centrale Operativo - Central Operative Service] and Gratteri from the anti-terrorism division. La Barbera and Murgolo were there but didn't notice anything. And behind the scenes of the "spy" and "Judas" we can see the shadow of the real head of the riot police, Valerio Donnini, father of the special antiriot unit.
by Alessandro Mantovani

They injured 61 persons who were sleeping, splitting open heads and breaking bodies without remorse. They manufactured evidence, such as the two famous fake molotov cocktails, to arrest 93 innocent people. And now the investigation of the Diaz school raid, which has brought the prosecuting magistrate to interrogate even Gianni De Gennaro as a witness (head of the italian police, ndt), delivers us the supercops who deny the evidence, contradict one another, trample on the penal procedure laws, and pass responsibility for what happened to the riot police squad led by Vincenzo Canterini as much as they can. None of them saw even a baton raised. From Canterini to the prefect La Barbera, they all claim to have entered the school "afterwards", "in the rear", "amongst the last" "when the situation was already settled". And the behaviour of some big names like Gianni Luperi is incredible, number two of the antiterrorism squad of the Ministry of the Interior (former UCIGOS) and responsible during the G8 for the international police coordination room: in July Luperi refused to respond to prosecutors, a right of private citizens (or Silvio Berlusconi) but hardly acceptable behaviour for a top police officer that the judges intended to show a video depicting him handing around a plastic bag containing two fake molotov cocktails in the courtyard of the Diaz school. The vicequestore who brought that bag to the school, Pietro Troiani (37 year old), who admitted the fact after the testimony of former policeman, now key witness, Michele Burgio (34 years old), which nailed him to his responsibilities, refuses to confront the person to whom he declares to have have delivered the two bottles, Massimiliano De Bernardini. The latter, 36 years old, is the same person who has had to admit never having faced the famous stone-throwing that was the official pretext for the Diaz school 'search' on July 21st 2001. And there's more to all this. The head officer of the Central Operations Service (SCO), Franco Gratteri, key player in the struggle against mafia and "pupil" of De Gennaro's, turns out to have been there but was kind of sleeping, totally unaware of what was happening: it's all the riot police fault, Gratteri said, spending time explaining the "mistake" he made sending a small squad into the media center in the school opposite the Diaz school (where computers were destroyed and hard disks stolen) and trying to correct himself as he can when he is shown in a video talking to Luperi with the plastic bag in his hands some meters away from his vice, Gilberto Caldarozzi.

It's better to know exactly what they recounted because no one can say at the moment how the main enquiry on 2001 G8 events will end. In Genoa the first step of the procedures are beginning and it's all internal to the tribunal. The assisatant district attorneys Francesco Albini Cardona, Monica Parentini, Vittorio Ranieri Miniati, Francesco Pinto and Enrico Zucca must now defend their investigation from the main attorney Francesco Lalla, who has been the most "understanding" towards the police since the beginning. Given the impossibility of identifying individually those responsible for the beatings, as almost all of them operated with their faces covered and hidden, the investigation for injuries and abuses will take place under art. 40 of the penal procedure code, which can be used to punish policeman for not having prevented a crime. This possibility has precedents in the Italian law cases, but Lalla could try to undermine all the investigation by using a different interpretation. After all, the more or less one hundred people under investigation for the Diaz school raid would already be free of all charges if the fake molotov had not been discovered and used to extend the charges on the head of the 13 signatories of the arrest report and the other officials present during the operation (19 in total).

Donnini, the ghost "general"

Also on this point we have to start from the two molotov cocktails found in the afternoon during the riots in Corso Italia by the vicequestore Pasquale Guaglione, who afterwards declared to the attorneys to recognize them as the same one found in the Diaz school. From the interrogation report we know that Guaglione gave the bottles to Valerio Donnini, head officer of the Ministry of the Interior, Canterini's predecessor at the helm of of the Rome's riot squad, and true father of the riot unit. In honour of the memory of the old military school some policeman still call hiim "general". During the G8, General Donnini had the role of "coordinating mobile riot squad operations and logistics, as well as the air- and sea-borne squads and the special forces" (from the Interior Ministry order about G8 security). He was esentially chief of chiefs, a sort of "ghost commander" as Il Manifesto called him on august 12th 2001, when for the first time his name came to light.

Guaglione stated that Donnini said: "I will take care of these, since they are important". The "general" denies all this, but admits to having put the bottles in the jeep he was using to move around, along with his driver Brugio. The boy recounted a rude answer: "When Mr. Donnini came I pointed out that we still had the bottles in the back of the car, and he responded to me very angrily and irritatedly, as if I had asked a stupid question or something I should not have asked" says Brugio in his testimony on July 4th 2002. Donnini, the same day, denied it all: "I can rule out having made such an ambiguous response to his remark, that I do not recall, and if I may say so, a remark observation born of a malicious prejudice, as if I had no intention to formally deliver them. That duty law with Burgio".

Burgio was a driver for the logistical structure. He drove around Donnini first and and that evening brough Troiani up to the Diaz school. On July 10th he confirmed: "I remember having talked about the bottles to Mr. Donnini and he answered me in a nasty and impatient manner." He further explained: "I was worried about the bottles. I could have brought them to the headquarters myself, but I have been trained to ask orders to the highest official in the car when I am working in a mobile squad. Having asked for orders first to Mr. Donnini and later to Mr. Troiani and not having received any reply, I decided not to take any personal initiative". A personal initiative that will be taken by Troiani (alone?).

Burgio the "Informer", Troiani the "Judas"

That night the same Donnini mobilizes the riot squad for the "search", be it sharing with others the unexplained recourse to the riot forces. The molotov cocktails are still on the jeep; Brugio just moved them into the boot of the car. It's at this point that Troiani enters the scene, using the same driver because he is part of the same structure as Donnini (as well as being regarded as his pupil). Troiani should not even be at the Diaz school. In the first documents, his name is not mentioned: Burgio mentions him first. When he is questioned as a witness on July 1st 2002, Troiani denies at first, claiming that the bottles were found outside the school: "My driver Burgio approached me and told me that in the car or near the car have been found, by him or by someone else, two molotov cocktails. (...) I brought them immediately to Di Bernardini and went away.". Then when the prosecutor notes that this is "different from Di Bernardini's statements", Troiani adds: " I know. I told Di Bernardini that my men had found the bottles in the courtyard of the school or on the entrance staircase." The judge then stresses out that "in the report we find another version of the finding of the bottles", (it reports in the school, not outside of it, nda). Troiani at this point says: " I understand I am being imprecise; my problem was to get rid of those bottles", admitting candidly that the same Roman riot squad where Di Bernardini works, notifying him of his being summoned as a witness, put him in contact with his colleague: "Mrs Manti gave me the telephone number of the colleague; she dialed the number for me. Then I talked with Burgio as well." At that point Troiani is under investigation and for the police he becomes the "Traitor": the report of Genoa DIGOS squad (political police) published in September 2002 with a picture of Giotto's Judas on the frontpage makes one think of him. Di Bernardini claims to have diverted Troiani directly to Caldarozzi without asking anything about the origins of the molotov cocktails. These two are former classmates and seem to be seeking a agreed version of events, exchanging lots of phonecalls and SMS messages. When Di Bernardini ask to meet Troiani, the latter refuses. And in any case the molotov bottles end up in Caldarozzi's hands, another big name who initially denied any responsibility but who after seeing the video says: " I acknowledge that Troiani and Di Bernardini declarations are supported by the video evidence. I repeat that I don't recall having handled the plastic bag."

Number Twos get Nailed by Video Evidence

Half past midnight. The slaughter is done. It's the moment filmed by Primocanale (listed in the judges' papers as Blue sky 1 and 2) and shown to those under investigation on July 30th 2002. At the entrance of the school we see Luperi and Caldarozzi with a bag; some meters away there is the head of the Genoa DIGOS division, Spartaco Mortola, as well as Canterini, Gratteri and Giovanni Murgolo, representing the prefect Ansoino Andreassi, who stayed behind in the Police Headquarters due to his "doubts" on the operation. Murgolo talks to him by phone from the courtyard. Both the current second in command of the SISDE (secret service, ndt) Andreassi and Bologna vice Murgolo come from the same school, the Communist Party anti-terrorism squad, while all the others involved come from riot squad background (and De Gennaro). But among all these "fine heads" and expert investigators, no one worries about where the molotovs comes from, which if they can't be linked to anybody are useful only for propaganda.

Murgolo anyway tries to get out of the thing in the cleanest way, as does Gratteri and the prefect Arnaldo La Barbera, former head of UCIGOS who died some months ago. They cut a fairly shoody figure though. Gratteri has to say feebly: "Perhaps I would not repeat what I maintain to have been an error; I would not go again to the Diaz school". Much more serious however are the positions of Calderozzi, Luperi and especially the Genovese Mortola : he is the one who carried out the overview of the place and gave the okay for the operation, saying that he had learnt from the GSF that no-one knew in whose hands the school now was. Heavy allegations also for Filippo Ferri and Fabio Ciccimarra, the two young vicequestore fingered by Di Bernardini and Mortola as the ones who actually wrote the official report then signed by 13 people. Ferri, (born in 1968) is the head of La Spezia mobile squad; Ciccimarra led the anti-robbery squad in Naples and was boss of the police accused of abuses perpetrated in Raniero barracks during the Global Forum of March 14th 2001 [in Naples]. They both say that the charges criminal association were decided by them after the raid in the Police Headquarters, with all the other head officers, imputing responsibility for the molotov cocktails to all 93 [people arrested]. The judge and the tribunal will reject their report: the arrests won't be approved and the investigation will begin from there.

Franco Gratteri's accusation

Donnini on the other hand was not at the Diaz school. The "general" is a witness, not one of the people investigated. Nonetheless it is quite scary the shadow he casts over all the operation, and even Gratteri seems to suggest so. On July 3rd 2002 he said to the judges: "It may have been someone from the mobile squad or from other squads who caused the chaos in the school, just as the episode of the simulated stabbing could have been used to justify the abuses towards some of the people in the place; I think that the molotov cocktail episode itself could have been arranged to justify what happened. I think it's important to determine who ordered Troiani to go to the school, insists Gratteri, since it is possible that he got involved in the operation with all the others and he tried afterwards to cover the facts. There could be many concrete motives for a faction of the police I don't deem representative.". This is the chiefs' 'line': it's all the Canterini squad's fault, the slaughter, the fake stabbing, the molotov. And if Troiani, even not being part of the same squad, still defines himself as one of the squad ("we of the squad", he says in a declaration), his boss Donnini is the soul, memory and current top man of the riot police.

A "reaction" to the "stone-throwing"?

Aside from the stabbing of the policeman Massimo Nucera, that will be further investigated from February 18th on, the prosecutors are evaluating one by one the positions of the different officials. With respect to the molotov cocktail episode, they have to prove that it was actually a planned action, and this is rarely easy to prove. Also because the fake evidence seems to have been conceived only after the operation, to cover the bloodshed.

Theoretically the search was a planned operation, drawing on a supposed "stone-throwing" episode against one of the mixed squads organized on the night of the 21st by Caldarozzi following the orders by Andreassi and Gratteri and in collaboration with Donnini. No one has ever named the victims of the stone-throwing. Not even Di Bernardini, who wrote a first report as if he had been present during the episode and then changed his version: "I don't know what to say; I reported what I had been told"; no one knows who told him so. As if it was nothing everybody talks of the search as a "reaction" to the "stone-throwing". Even Gratteri says something about responding to the "aggression". And from there to "retaliation" is a very short step, particularly for that "part" of the police force for whom the head of the SCO has no love."