March 14, 1978 – July 20, 2001
Carlo Giuliani was an Italian anarchist murdered by Italian police.
He was antiestablishment for much of his short life; his first conflict with the police came at age 15. Abolition Media Worldwide (site offline) eulogized him as follows:
Carlo Giuliani was versed in the development of this global movement. He had been raised with knowledge of Gramsci, Marx, Malatesta, Sacco and Vanzetti. His father was a leader of the communist trade Union CGIL and he came from a family rooted in struggle for the rights of working people.
Carlo went to university, studying history, and lived in a squat in Genoa. Carlo’s father, Giuliano Giuliani, put it like this “Carlo…is a young man that reacted to a profound injustice.”
His murder occurred during the massive protests (and extraordinary repression) around the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy.
per Wikipedia:
Images show Giuliani picking up a fire extinguisher from the ground and approaching the policeman’s vehicle with it before he was shot and then run over twice by the Land Rover. Placanica [the cop] was acquitted of any wrongdoing, as judges decided that he’d fired skyward in self-defense, but a flying stone had deflected the bullet and killed Giuliani. The idea that the stone killed Giuliani was questioned on the basis of a security video and the stone being covered in blood, while the balaclava through which it should have wounded Giuliani was intact. Videos and photos show that the stone was dipped in blood and place beside Giuliani’s head minutes after his death, suggesting an attempt to conceal the police responsibility. Later tribunals including the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that Giuliani was killed directly by the bullet.
During the “official investigation,” supporters of Carlo uploaded photos, videos and eyewitness reports that contradicted the lies of the police onto Indymedia, among the earliest uses of the platform in Europe.
State violence was widespread during the summit, including torture of those arrested. Over 400 non-police (including lawyers, bystanders etc) were injured. Police baton attacks left three people in comas, including an indymedia journalist who lost 16 teeth, had eight bones broken and one of his lungs torn. At least one person suffered brain damage, while another had both jaws and fourteen of his teeth broken. An Italian parliamentary inquiry concluded no wrongdoing on the part of police.
Carlo is well-remembered as an anarchist martyr across Europe and beyond. In December 2022, a group calling itself the Carlo Giuliani Vengeance Cell blew up the vehicle of a top Italian diplomat outside her home in Athens.
An Italian documentary (sympathetic, but not by an anarchist) about Carlo’s murder can be viewed here: