Italian police found guilty of G8 brutality

An Italian court has jailed 15 police officers for brutality against protesters arrested at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001.

The prison terms range from five months to five years.

Forty-five members of the security services had been accused of physical and verbal abuse, which the prosecutors said amounted to torture.

Seventy-three protesters from Italy, Britain, Poland and Ireland were injured, some of them seriously, when police systematically attacked a school which they had been using as a dormitory.

It is unlikely that any of the officers sentenced will actually serve time in jail as the case will now go to appeal and a statute of limitations will weigh in to save those found guilty from actually serving their sentences.

However the Italian Government will be forced to pay out millions of dollars in compensation to victims of police brutality during their detention