time to translate: italian authorities are under pressure (German Aol news)

[Jeremy Osner]

Berlin/Rome -- After the heavy riots at the G8 summit in Genoa the Italian
authorities were increasingly under pressure to explain the controversial
procedure of the police against demonstrators. The German embassy in Rome asked
the Italian government to explain the circumstances surrounding the arrests of
German anti-globalisationists. The Italian authorities agreed to provide
information on all aspects of the investigations, said a speaker of the
Nonresident Office on Friday in Berlin. The responsible public prosecutor's
office in Genoa extended its communications.

Berlusconi: Nobody gets beaten

After heavy criticism, both domestic and international, president Berlusconi
stood before the parliament on Friday in Rome. [Here I'm very unsure exactly
what B. is saying because I don't quite understand the German construction] "If
violence and misfeasance could be quieted by the communications of the interior
ministry and the public prosecutor, then no lawbreaker would be beaten," he said
in a heated parliamentary debate. This was Berlusconi's response to reproaches
from the opposition.

Communications against the unknown

The Italian Justice Department wants to concern itself primarily with the
behavior of the security forces while transporting and detaining prisoners.
[another construction I'm not familiar with:] The communications of possible
physical injuries, coercion and official misfeasance aimed themselves for the
time being unknown. In total there were about half a dozen German
communications.

"Wilfully to infringe on human rights"

The Green parliamentary representative Christian Stroebele accused the Italian
police of "wilfully" having infringed on human rights. The prison conditions
were in contravention of the Geneva convention on treatment of prisoners, said
Stroebele. "It is horrific, what I saw and heard there," he reported from his
visit to a jail in Genoa and Pavia, 80 km away. An official had, during the
"raid" by the police on an accomodation place for demonstrators, "trod on the
breast" of a woman with his boot. The woman suffered a haemorrhage of the lungs.
In the jails, the prisoners had to listent to Fascistic and sexist speeches.

21 Germans are still in prison

Of the 70 Germans originally detained, according to the Nonresident Office, 21
are still in prison. For 18 of them, a long-term investigative detention has
been ordered.

Stroebele wants an investigative commission

Stroebele supported further public pressure to create an international
commission to investigate the occurrences. Stroebele criticised anew, that
demonstrators against the G8 summit were being violently restrained, although
they had offered no resistance. Furthermore, after their arrest all contact with
their families or the German consul had been refused. Despite determination of
the illegality of their detention, they were not released immediately from the
prison, said Stroebele. That was an infringement on their rights, "which should
not be possible in an Italian rights-nation [?] in the middle of Europe."