Diaz School, no to the review of the conviction for forgery of the former Scout director

The Cassazione rejected the request for a revision of the trial presented by the defence of Francesco Gratteri, the former super-cop - who took part in the capture, among others, of mafia bosses such as Leoluca Bagarella and Giovanni Brusca -convicted definitively in 2012 to four years for aggravated perjury for the events at theDiaz School during the G8 in Genoa in 2001, when he was director of theCentral Operations Service (Sco) of the Police.

For the Supreme Court, the new evidence brought by Gratteri's defence was not sufficient to undermine the findings to be considered by now definitive, made by the Court of Appeal. In the opinion of the Court of Merit, Gratteri "by participating, in the capacity of senior manager and director of the Sco, in the organization and execution of a search on the independent initiative of the judicial police of the school building Diaz - Pertini, located in Genoa, with the use of more than two hundred operators, had attested facts or circumstances not corresponding to the truth, in complicity, among others, with the material writers and subscribers of the documents forwarded to the judicial authorities in connection with the arrest of Albrecht Thomas and ninety-two other persons, and this in order to build up a compendium of evidence against those arrested in flagrante delicto as well as to justify the violence used against them on the occasion of the break-in inside the institute and the causing of personal injuries to those arrested and thus to ensure the impunity of the offences committed by the public officials who had carried out the latter conduct.

Gratteri was therefore present both at the time of the break-in inside the school and during the subsequent operations to collect the objects and materials taken to be seized. Finally, 'during the placement, always within the premises of the same institute, of the find consisting of two incendiary bottles molotov cocktails - fully aware of what had actually happened, he had determined and induced the agents and officers of the judicial police engaged in the operations, some of whom were his direct subordinates, to falsely attest - we read in the judgment - that he had met violent resistance from the occupants, consisting of a dense throwing of stones and blunt objects from the windows; that he had encountered resistance, also from inside the institute, from the occupants, who engaged in violent scuffles with police officers armed with knives and improper weapons; that what had been found inside the institute, including clubs, sticks and bars, had been used as improper weapons by the occupants themselves to commit the acts of resistance; the discovery of two incendiary bottles with primer on the ground floor of the institute searched near the entrance, in a place visible and accessible to all, so as to attribute their availability and possession indiscriminately to all the occupants of the building".

For the Court of Cassation, there was no distortion of the evidence. The court of second instance was correct in affirming the responsibility of the former director, not on the basis of a peremptory 'he could not have been unaware', referring to the responsibility for his position of command, but on the basis of specific and concrete elements against him, including the converging statements, including that of former prefect Andreassi on the active and central presence of Francesco Gratteri not only during the entire operation, but also during the editing of the acts and in the control of their content.

Therefore, the appellant's guilty verdict remains valid 'by reason of his arrival on the scene when the operation was in full swing and the command position he had assumed before, during and after the raid, he had personally ascertained "what was really going on", realising perfectly well that what some of his colleagues had described in the trial as a veritable "Mexican butchery" had occurred'.