BY SEAN HEALY
While they undoubtedly thought that brutality would fix everything, things are only getting worse for Italy's authorities, with ever more condemnations coming from ever wider circles of their violent attempts to put down anti-G8 protesters in Genoa on July 20-21.
Sixty protesters remain in jail in Genoa, including 26 members of an Austrian theatre group, Publix Theatre. They face long jail terms, of up to 15 years, if convicted of conspiring to cause "devastation and pillage".
Outrage about the police behavior has built across Europe, much to the embarrassment of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Newspapers have been filled with accounts of police brutality, many of them centering on the brutal July 21 raid on the building housing the Indy Media Centre and the Genoa Social Forum, which left more than 60 badly injured and bloodstains on walls and floors.
Thousands of people have marched in protest across Italy and in Paris, London, Geneva, Rome, Berlin and Belgrade. In Athens, riot police attacked thousands of protesters with tear gas as they converged on the Italian embassy. In Amsterdam, about a dozen protesters occupied the Italian consulate and hung a banner out front "Italy Tortures G-8 Detainees".
Mainstream politicians have felt compelled to criticise Italy's policing. Spain's European affairs secretary, Ramon de Miguel, called the scenes a replay of fascism, while Hans-Christian Strobele, a European deputy from Germany, said the Genoa police reminded him of "the military dictatorship in Argentina".
The Italian government has even copped flak from a most unlikely source: the US corporate media.
Initially covering the Genoa protests the way it has covered all such anti-globalisation actions, by blaming the protesters for violence, the US media has suddenly woken up to discover the brutality of Italian policing tactics.
One of the 26 performers still detained is a US citizen, Susanna Thomas, a Quaker from New Jersey, a committed pacifist and a student at the exclusive Bryn Mawr college, whose family has mounted a high-profile campaign for her release. Their pleas for her release have featured on the front page of the New York Times and on NBC's flagship Today Show.
Studying at the Jesuit University in France, Thomas had volunteered to translate for the Genoa Social Forum and participate in the Austrian theatre troupe.
She and other members of Publix Theatre were arrested as they were leaving Genoa. As evidence of the group's supposedly violent intentions, police confiscated two penknives and a black bra, which they claimed linked the performers to the anarchist Black Bloc, a group which police have sought to blame for starting the street battles.
Their cases will be reviewed in the next week, but none have been offered bail.
Berlusconi has since stated a desire to get out of hosting an international food conference scheduled for Rome in November and authorities in Naples are keen to dump a planned NATO conference in their city next month.