The Angers Court of Appeal examines on Friday an arrest warrant from the Italian justice targeting the anti-globalization activist Vincenzo Vecchi, who took refuge in Brittany after his conviction linked to the riots on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Wanted by the police Italian, Vincenzo Vecchi was arrested on August 8, 2019 in Rochefort-en-Terre (Morbihan), where he had been working as a house painter for many years.
Read also: Freedom of Vincenzo Vecchi: the Court of Cassation overturns the decision, return to appeal
In 2009, he was sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison by the Genoa Court of Appeal “
for complicity in theft with violence, arson, complicity in devastation and looting, willful damage and use of prohibited weapons in a place public
”during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. After three months of detention in Rennes-Vezin prison, he was released on November 15, 2019 by the Rennes court of appeal, which ruled that“
the procedure for 'execution
' of the European arrest warrant.
The Court of Cassation finally referred the case to the Angers Court of Appeal.
In the meantime, this son of a worker, originally from Bergamo (Lombardy) and aged 47, has found a permanent job in the construction of ecological buildings in Questembert (Morbihan).
"
For 19 years that the facts have taken place, it is still a sacred success of reintegration
", smiles Laurence Petit, one of the most active members of its support committee.
Because more than a year after his surprise arrest, his friends from Rochefort-en-Terre, many of whom had met at the Café de la Pente, did not disarm, multiplying petitions, support meetings and open letters.
“
We started because he's a friend.
We dissected everything and it was not easy.
Today, we have the certainty of being right,
”explains GianBattista Ferraglio, Italian ceramist based in Rochefort-en-Terre.
"
Not an altar boy
"
Vincenzo's friends thus succeeded in obtaining a copy of the photos which led to the conviction of the former bassist of the rock group “
My hairdresser is dead
”.
In some photos, he appears helmeted, a stick in his hand or trying (in vain) to set a tire on fire, describe his supporters.
“He
is not an altar boy.
He himself never said he was innocent,
”admitted Mr. Ferraglio.
But, "
at no time, we see him throw anything at the police or break the storefront of a bank,
" as he has been accused, he says.
"
These photos are an element of context
" which will perhaps be presented to the magistrates of Anjou, notes Me Maxime Tessier, who defends Mr. Vecchi with Me Catherine Glon.
But the bulk of the debate should focus on fairly technical procedural issues, in particular on dual criminality: for the European arrest warrant against Mr Vecchi to be executed, the acts he committed must be a breach of both in France and Italy.
“
However, Italy has reactivated a law of the Mussolini regime.
There was no equivalent offense in France at the material time
, ”explains Me Tessier, referring to the offense of“
devastation and rampage
”introduced in 1930 into the Italian Penal Code.
The severity of the sentence is also pointed out by the defenders of Mr. Vecchi.
"
It is not only a disproportionate sentence, but a totally delusional sentence
", asserts the writer Éric Vuillard, Goncourt Prize 2017, who was very involved in the defense of the Italian activist.
Mr. Vecchi was one of the "
ten of Genoa
", ten activists sentenced, often to very heavy sentences, for the clashes of the G8.
Member of the “
anarcho-autonomous Milanese
”
sphere
, he was the last of the “
Black blocs on the run
”, to use the terminology of Italian justice.
The protests against the summit had been marked by much violence.
These had culminated in the death of a young man, Carlo Giuliani, shot in the head by an Italian rifleman.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has condemned Italy on three occasions for the police actions carried out on the sidelines of the Genoa summit, equating the "
uncontrolled
"
violence
of the police officers with "
acts of torture
".