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2008-06-08

G8, first final sentence

The Republic – G8, first final sentence
Genoa, June 7, 2008

Translated from La Reppublica

She’s always been the first one, Valerie. The first to enter into the Red Zone. The first to be arrested by the police during those days of July. And the first to wind up in the hell of Bolzaneto. As
of yesterday, she is now the first to have completed the third – and
definitive – court of appeal for a legal hypothesis of a crime linked
to the G8. The Court of Appeal has decided, and the conviction and sentence remanded echo the paradox. Because
Valerie Vie must spend five months in prison for that half-step forward
- toward liberty, she says – after one of the infamous walls had alread
y opened.

2001

Meanwhile
the perpetrators of the harassment and violence of Bolzaneto will
always be able, in case of conviction, to rely on the discretion of the
courts. Just
as many of the super-police involved in the bloody blitz on the Diaz
School , where 93 innocent no-global demonstrators were first massacred
by beatings and then arrested using false evidence. The
sixth section of the Supreme Court has decided on the inadmissibility
of any recourse against the precedent of their appealed sentence. The Court confirmed the conviction – the penalty was naturally suspend
ed – and in addition, the court costs (300 Euros) are being requested instead of any fines.

A
mockery, for those who seven years ago came to peacefully demonstrate,
and instead underwent three days and two nights in a “temporary
detention center,” of harassment and threats.
It was the afternoon of July 20, 2001. Valerie was with the demonstrators from the ATTAC movement, in Dante plaza. With her hands gripping the grille, pushing and shouting against the “Great Eight” for “another word,” a better world. “Then suddenly the fence swung forward,” she recounts, “and I took a step forward. One step. With hands raised, in a sign of peace. ‘Behold,’ I said to myself, ‘Now I will speak with some representative of the government. Now we can speak our piece.’” But no. “They tie
d my hands behind my back and rammed me into a strange police car. Without seats, with the windows closed.” One hour later, she entered into the Bolzaneto barracks. And when a man pulled her out of the car, she grasped everything. “The violence with which he had grabbed me. The brutality, which in that moment appeared unnecessary to me. It was a moment, and behind my restlessness came my growing awareness. It was inevitable that something bad would happen. And I was up to my neck in it.”
Valerie Vie, who in Italy is represented by the lawyer Antonio Lerici, is a journalist. She lives not far from Avignon . She became the protagonist of a documentary film by Pierre Carles, the French Michael Moore . Who
in these years has followed her with a videocamera, and will continue
to do so until the end of her civil trial for Bolzaneto. Carles wishes to denounce the madness of those “barracks” which have scandalized Europe . “I fell in the courtyard of the barracks. The sun was beating down – what a day. There was an unreal silence. Strange. Around me I saw to many men, in uniform and in plainclothes. They did not speak. They fixed me in their stares. They hated me.” They beat her, insulted her, threatened her: “Are these photos of your children? You will never see them again.” Humiliated, derided. “The screams that rose with the passing of the hours, along with the tears. The
blood.” Seven years later, she must still attend the first judgment of her torturers. “But it does not matter to me whether or not they go to jail. I am only interested in speaking of what has happened. Remembering, recording. Because all of this must never happen again.” In the meantime, they have condemned and sentenced her. For one step toward .

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