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July 31, 2001
Inside a Genoa
Prison
Beatings,
Abuse
and Retinal Scans
by Jonathan
Norman Blair
I declare that
this is a true and honest statement which I have written on Friday
27th July 2001. I permit it to be used by other individuals and
agencies who support me and all the other people arrested at
the Scolastico A.
Diaz and surrounding area on the night of Saturday 21st July
2001. I state that I wish to sue the Italian police for illegal
arrest, kidnapping and torture and I ask for support in doing
this. Please contact me via e-mail.
I went to Genoa
to participate in the mass demonstrations against the G8 and
its policies. I went because I believe in a free and equal society
with people living in harmony with each other and the ecological
system. I flew out with my friend Dan McQuillan on Tuesday 17th
July (our return flight was on Monday 23rd July) on Ryan Air
from Stansted to Genoa.
On Saturday
night we were staying at the Scolastico A. Diaz. The school was
having renovation work done on it but as far as I was aware,
it was legally occupied and the atmosphere was relaxed and friendly.
It was directly
opposite the media centre and the Genoa Social Forum
administrative base. It was a big building with several floors,
old with high ceilings. Through the front doors was a large hallway.
On the left was a ramp leading up to a
line of computers. To the left of that were stairs leading to
the first floor where Dan and I were staying.
The room we stayed in had a window view onto the courtyard at
the front of the school and was directly opposite the media centre
with a narrow road
in-between.
I went to bed about 12 o'clock on Saturday night. Staying in
the room was Dan and a guy from New Zealand who I now know to
be Sam Buchanan. I was
dozing off and then I suddenly heard a crashing, roaring sound
coming from outside. I quickly got out of my sleeping bag and
looked out of the window. I saw a mass
of police made up of squads from various cities (I know this
from the documents that the judge gave me when I was released)
filling the street outside.
One of my memories was of the police with shields charging down
the street followed by 2 police vans. There were people in the
street shouting and screaming. It was a nightmare of sound. I
presume that this is the
point that Mark Covell (another UK national) was critically injured
by the police as he was crossing the street.
I began rapidly putting my clothes on and looked out
of the window again. I saw the police van ram the school gates.
We began to push our bags into the corner of the room hoping
that if they came along the scaffolding that the police wouldn't
see us. I heard people screaming in pain from downstairs.
It took about
a few minutes before the police smashed down the door to our
room. They smashed our door  down
and had a large searchlight, which they
shone into the room. As soon as they saw us they were on us.
There was maybe about a dozen of them, it was complete chaos.
Dan was completely battered by them all
down his left side, he had his wrist broken and he had
blows to the head.
Sam was battered over the head three times. When I met him in
the prison afterwards, he said that each time he was hit that
it was like in a cartoon book as he saw stars and sparkles from
the force of the blows. I received blows while we were on the
floor and have bruises, but nothing in comparison with the others.
I don't know
how long this lasted, maybe just a couple of minutes, maybe a
bit longer. I could feel the venom and hatred from them. They
eventually left the room and as we lay there in a pool of blood
they threw some of the window frames and other furniture on top
of us. It was as if they were the destroy squad and then a minute
or so later came the 'retrieval' squad.
They told us
to get out of the room and as we went down the stairs the police
were lined up and were hitting us with their batons. It was as
if they had gone berserk and they were getting in each others
way trying to get
to us. We moved down the ramp into the main hall area. We were
told to get on the floor and had to lie kneeling on the floor,
head down and arms stretched out in
front.
At one point
someone who I assume had been badly beaten up outside was brought
into the hall on a stretcher. This lasted about maybe 15-20 minutes
(it
was difficult to tell the passage of time in this situation)
till the medical workers and ambulances arrived. Dan was bleeding
heavily. The ambulance crew arrived and began ripping up cardboard
boxes to make splints as they did not have enough equipment to
deal with the number of broken bones.
Of the 93 people arrested, over 60 went to hospital and remember,
this was not for minor injuries but for broken
bones and head trauma. One man was completely battered down his
back and did not go to hospital. Dan was put on an ambulance
trolley and I was holding his hand and helping him. I demanded
to go with Dan to the ambulance because he was in such a state
and could not speak Italian. The police were reluctant to let
me leave but the paramedics insisted.
With them we
made our way to the ambulance outside. As we were leaving the
building, the police tried to rip a money belt off Dan. I unclipped
it so they wouldn't hurt Dan further. One cop began flicking
through the money belt and we haven't seen it since. It contained
Dan's passport, at least one credit card and several hundred
pounds of English and Italian money.
We were taken to the Galliera (?) Hospital, in Genoa. In the
ambulance the crew were really friendly to us, in the hospital
with police around they were not. It felt like a police state
with police in complete command. I sat in
the waiting room while Dan was being treated. I felt terrified.
I saw a pay phone and had a phone card on me. I rang my girlfriend
Mel and another friend about Saturday 1.10am British time. I
left a message that we had been attacked and that I was OK but
Dan was in a hospital badly injured. When trying to make a third
call I was stopped by a police officer.
The people taken to hospital had fairly serious injuries and
had to sit on chairs waiting. The police had taken over the hospital.
As I understand it people with such traumas (eg head injuries)
should be under medical
observation for 24 hours. There was a group of about a dozen
of us in the hallway, under police guard. They then started moving
us to a police van. I had to sit on the
floor for the journey. Dan was also in the van. We were driven
to a holding centre called Bolzenato (I was told later by other
prisoners. I am not sure if this is the correct spelling or
name). It did not appear to be an
official police station or prison. It was a place of a terror
and fear.
On getting out of the van the first thing we had to do was to
put our hands up and face the wall with legs apart (in a spread-eagled
position). The police were kicking our feet apart if they thought
that our feet were too
close together. One police officer who kicked my legs looked
about 18 years old (I was old enough to be his father!). We were
made to face the wall in this position and there was a row of
us. A police officer came behind me and speaking English in an
Italian accent said 'who is your government'. The person before
me in the row had answered 'Polizei', so I said the same. I was
afraid of being beaten.
I think at
this point they took our names and addresses.
They then took us to a cell. The cell was quite large with a
high ceiling, heavily barred windows and high doors. We were
told to sit down with our backs against the wall. People in the
cell, especially young people were
crying a lot of the time. They were traumatised. I tried to lock
inside myself, stay calm and strong.
At one point we had to stand with our hands against the wall,
arms up for an hour and 15 minutes with police screaming abuse
at us. For all I knew there was a police officer behind me with
a truncheon ready to beat me across the back.
There were different voices screaming abuse, I was lucky I didn't
understand Italian. My hands and arms went dead, I felt strange
sensations in my palms. It was helpful to me to meditate, to
focus my mind. It was physically hard
to keep that position for even a short length of time. Dan with
a broken wrist and head injuries also had to do this.
The cell itself was freezing, the floor had ceramic tiles and
it was cold even in the daytime. I had on a cotton shirt and
jeans only. Dan was wearing shorts and a thin shirt, he did manage
to get a sleeping bag, I can't remember
how, but we all shared it.
At one point
the police took Dan out of the cell. We didn't know what was
going to happen to him. Later on I heard this woman shouting
'please help me, please help me' over and over. This was torture,
it was psychological and physical warfare. The torture consisted
of:
· Physical abuse (blows etc)
· Sleep deprivation
· Having to endure cold temperatures with no protection
· Food and water deprivation
· Refusal to have any access to outside world
· Forced into spreadeagled position
· Verbal abuse
· Extreme intimidation (eg people disappearing and then
screams start)
Anyone in there who looked punk or scruffy was getting a really
hard time. There was an American guy in there in his 30s, I saw
his back on Tuesday and he was completely battered, all over
his back. He'd said that when the
school was raided he was beaten on his back. Every time they
beat him they cut some more of his dreadlocks off till they'd
cut all his locks off.
A woman said
that when she was attacked by the police (at the school), they
cut off a lump of her hair (and her appearance was very straight).
It felt like they were
taking trophies. A man said that he was beaten on the back when
he had his arms up. I was hit in the face when the police were
strip searching me, it was an open-handed blow. Dan said it was
important to scream when the police hit you in order to deflect
them from beating you further.
The most threatening police officers there we called the 'grey
monsters'. They were enormous, similar to bouncers. They had
grey uniforms, body armour, and big boots. Whenever you had to
go to the toilet, a police officer (sometimes a 'grey monster',
sometimes another type of officer) would 'escort' you by holding
the flesh at the back of the neck and walking you so you were
bent over, sometimes almost bent over double. You were unable
to see anything or know who else was there.
With at least
two of the cells, they hung sheets over the doors so you could
not see inside at all. I remember seeing one cell through the
corner of my eye with I think two people inside with their arms
up the walls. It was
scary.
I was held in these conditions from about 5 am Sunday morning
till 6 am Monday morning, about 24 hours. Later I found that
other people were held for longer.
During this time we suffered sleep deprivation. Groups
of police were standing at the door and at the window, shouting
across the room, yelling and laughing. I saw Dan and another
prisoner being spat on by police officers.
The floor was freezing cold with no blankets. For the first six
hour we had no food or water. About midday they brought us two
very small biscuits each. Later on in the afternoon they gave
us about dozen ham rolls which we shared between the fourteen
of us. I would have thought that they knew many of us were vegetarian.
We had to stand with our arms up facing the wall 3 or 4 times
but there was no attempt to question us (although as far as I
know, some prisoners might have been interrogated I just did
not hear of this happening). They also kept counting us and asking
our names frequently, which often seemed to be nothing more than
a deliberate disruption.
I had now been without sleep since Saturday morning (I had only
just gone to bed when the police raided), by Monday night I was
hallucinating and became very paranoid. Many people had similar
experiences. One man did not know that he was even in Genoa,
he was in such a state.
Depriving people of sleep was a completely deliberate policy
by the police. Every half an hour to an hour they
would begin shouting and yelling. At no point were we allowed
access to a lawyer.
The police began processing people about 3am on Monday morning.
I was photographed directly onto a laptop, and they also used
an eye camera, presumably to take a retina scan and I was fingerprinted.
I was asked to strip and squat.
Eventually I was put into a cell on a bus and cuffed
tightly to another prisoner. It was around 6 am when we in this
bus (I believe that it was the first bus, the prisoners whose
surname started early in the alphabet
like mine) were taken to Pavia prison. As we were taken up the
stairs into the prison I received a blow to my back by a prison
officer in a dark section of the stairwell.
It was around
maybe 9 am Monday morning that I was taken to a cell of my own.
There was a mattress and blanket and thankfully it was warmer.
It sounds odd but I was relieved to be in prison. At a later
point I was
taken to another cell. I was given pasta with meat in it, even
though I had told the prison officer that I was vegetarian.
Between coming into the prison on about 7 am Monday and leaving
it at about 6pm Wednesday I had no exercise even though I requested
it on many occasions.
Dan managed to see a lawyer sometime on Tuesday. He bought back
news of a 30,000 strong demonstration it Milan against the shooting
and the beatings by the Italian police and the fact that there
was massive opposition to
this brutal repression. It was very encouraging for me, sometimes
I believed that maybe we might have been forgotten about even
though I knew that was not true.
He also managed
to send out a telegram. I requested
a lawyer and consulate access and to be able to send a telegram,
I completed the relevant forms but was not granted any of my
requests. It wasn't until later on Tuesday about 6 pm that I
received a telegram from my girlfriend Mel.
On Wednesday morning Dan was taken off to the judge,
as were many other prisoners. I started getting worried and I
expected the worse, maybe that I would have serious charges brought
against me and that I would be
framed by the police. But later on Wednesday afternoon I was
taken in front of the judge, who had arrived at the prison. There
was a lawyer present from the Genoa Social
Forum.
I had to explain to the judge about the nature of the arrest,
and whether I had any connections to the Black bloc. This interview
took about 10 minutes. I was
then taken back to my cell and then brought in front of the judge
again after 15 minutes. The judge said the arrest was illegal
and that there would be no charges made against me, and that
I was free to go. I was released at about 6 pm on Wednesday evening
into police detention.
There were about 60-100 people protesting outside the
police station gates, they stayed there till at least 4.45 am
the next morning to clap and cheer as people were being released.
That was fantastic and I know all the
prisoners really appreciated that active solidarity.
I was met by lawyers from the Genoa Social Forum and a lawyer
called Marie Louisa. The Germans who were detained were deported
to the German border. The Germans had a large escort of police
to take them to the border. One Lithuanian guy had no money,
passport or documents and the Lithuanian consulate were not contactable.
I gave him some money and asked the lawyers to look after him.
Local people
brought us food and clothes. The consulate staff were also there
to meet us at the prison and they stayed with us all the time
in the police station for which I am grateful.
We were all released without charge, yet we have been banned
from entering Italy for 5 years. But this is from an illegal
arrest. The reason given was that I am 'a danger to public order
and security'. The lawyers made many protests against the imposed
deportation order and we collectively protested against the it,
however we were taken to a Milan airport and basically left there
with no passports or money, all we had was a letter from the
police. We had to pay for our own flights for our own
deportation. Despite the fact that we were being deported by
the Italian state, we had to each buy our own tickets costing
£230 each we arrived at Heathrow on
Thursday morning.
In conclusion,
it felt like the beginning of a police state, like how, for example,
Pinochet seized power in Chile. There was no rule of law or any
regard for constitutional rights. The police were genuinely the
government.
But I do not
blame Italian people for this, many Italian people gave me much
solidarity and support I blame the Italian police and the Italian
state for what happened and I call upon them to be bought to
account for their completely unacceptable actions.
I would like to end by saying that I am not intimidated or frightened
by this police brutality. I am determined that the police and
their political masters will not get away with this. There have
been hundreds of thousands of people
all around the world supporting us and opposing the
G8. There is a huge push for change and I am proud to be part
of it. CP
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