70 Europe and Central Asia Summary of Amnesty International’s Concerns in the Region, January – June 2007 According to British Embassy figures, 13 people were hospitalized although it is not clear how many of these were victims of the force used by the police officers. On 5 April, Achille Serra, the Prefect (Prefetto) of Rome and responsible for the Rome police, stated that the force used was "justified" and that there was "no plan for an inquiry" unless evidence was provided to demonstrate that such an inquiry was necessary. G8 trials (see also EUR 01/001/2007) Trials against law enforcement officials involved in the policing of the G8 summit in Genova in 2001 continued. It is estimated that over 200,000 people participated in anti-globalization demonstrations on the streets of Genoa in the days immediately preceding and during the summit in 2001. A great number of reports of human rights violations committed by law enforcement officers, prison officers and medical personnel against Italian citizens and foreign nationals emerged immediately and have continued to do so ever since. By the end of the summit, one protester, Carlo Giuliani, had been shot dead, hundreds of people had been injured and more than 280 people, many of them foreign nationals, had been detained. Evidence disappears On 17 January, it emerged during a hearing in the trial of 29 police officers facing charges of, inter alia, violence and the fabrication of evidence in relation to the socalled Diaz raid, that key evidence against the police officers (namely a number of Molotov cocktails) had disappeared. The Diaz raid was an overnight police raid on a school building used as a dormitory for demonstrators and as centre for the Genoa Social Forum, the umbrella group organizing the main programme of demonstrations. The charges against the police officers range from abusing their powers as state officers, falsifying and Amnesty International planting evidence bodily harm. and causing serious The Molotov cocktails, which a police officer had confessed to planting in the school on orders from the deputy police chief in Genoa, were originally used to charge the occupants with possession of explosives and to justify the raid. After it emerged that they had been planted by police officers, they were used in the trials against police officers. On 25 January, a Genoa judge dismissed requests by lawyers defending the policemen to exclude, "as unfounded", those elements of the charge relating to the missing evidence from proceedings. The prosecuting magistrate’s efforts to find the missing evidence were met by a reply from the Genoa Questura stating that they may have been "destroyed by mistake". The responsibility for keeping the Molotov cocktails had rested with the Genoa division of the Division of General Investigations and Special Operations (Digos). In April, Genoa prosecutors opened preliminary investigations against several police officers for the disappearance of the Molotov cocktails. High ranking officials under investigation In June, Gianni De Gennaro, who had been the Head of the Italian police at the time of the G8 events in 2001, came under investigation for instigating perjury. Later that month, he was appointed head of the Minister of Interior Giuliano Amato’s Office (Capo di Gabinetto). In May, an investigation was launched against Francesco Colucci, the Questore (local chief of police) in Genova at the time of the G8 events in 2001, for perjury during a testimony he had given in one of the G8 trials on 3 May. First sentence In May, the first sentence against a police officer involved in the G8 events was handed down. In a civil court in Genoa, the Ministry of Interior was sentenced to pay AI Index: EUR 01/010/2007