Genoa protesters to sue following beatings

Two Irish protesters who have just returned from Genoa plan to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights following what they describe as "brutalising beatings" by Italian police.

Mr Mark O'Byrne (27) and his brother Patrick (24) were held for over 30 hours at a police station in Genoa and later at the Casa Reclusione San Michelle in Alessandria.

They were released on Monday morning. During their detention they were beaten on several occasions, they say, and have sustained extensive bruising. From Rathfarnham in Dublin, they arrived home yesterday morning.

Patrick, who works as a theatre attendant in the Coombe hospital, Dublin, was the most severely beaten and yesterday showed the dark purple bruising along his left shoulder and down his back and left arm. He has further bruising in three other places on his back and tender spots of bruising on his skull.

His brother, Mark, is employed as a recruitment consultant in Dublin. They flew to Verona in Italy last Monday and had planned to see an opera after attending protests at the G8 summit in Genoa last week.

Speaking after a silent protest by about 20 people outside the Italian embassy in Dublin yesterday, Mark said he and his brother had been taking part in a sit-down protest on Saturday afternoon.

"We were there for about 15 minutes when suddenly there was a line of police in plain clothes, with batons and helmets coming towards us."

At this point, he said, the crowd began to run away but were knocked to the ground and arrested. Mark said he was dragged into the back of an unmarked car and driven, with a guard on either side of him holding his head down, to "a sort of detention centre in the mountains".

"They were thumping, shouting and beating me in the groin."

Patrick was arrested and brought to a police station in Genoa, where he was stripsearched and "not beaten too badly there - just smacks and stuff". He was also driven to the centre outside Genoa where they were held in a cell with about six other protesters.

"We were put facing a wall with our legs splayed and hands up on the wall," Mark said.

"Then one guard came in, took off his gloves and rolled up his sleeves and just started pounding and kicking into us, shouting at us in Italian."

They were taken to be fingerprinted and interviewed and taken back to the cell where they were put against the wall and beaten if they talked or if their hands slipped, they said. At about midnight they were taken with six others to the remand centre at Alessandria.

They were held there overnight and released at about midnight on Sunday.

A spokesman for the Italian embassy would not comment on the allegations last night.