A Turin court on Friday granted prosecutors’ request to dismiss charges against 65 Extinction Rebellion activists who occupied the Intesa San Paolo skyscraper hall in April.
This location was the venue for the G7 climate, environment, and energy meeting. Prosecutors argued the activists’ action respected the balance between public order and the Constitutional right to peaceful protest. “No criminal law has been broken,” they stated, stating no property damage occurred.
The activist group, which protests to urge action on the climate crisis, welcomed the decision. However, they expressed concern that recent laws tightening penalties for civil disobedience and proposed security legislation may threaten the right to protest. “It is not the first time that Italian prosecutors seek, and obtain, case dismissals for movements like Extinction Rebellion,” the group said in a statement.
They also warned that these records remain in police databases, supporting social-danger judgments that could justify restrictive measures, including expulsion orders.
“However, these complaints remain in the police databases and they are used to justify social-danger judgments that are the basis of restrictive measures such as expulsion orders.
“There is a tendency to criminalise and restrict the spaces of democratic usability which has been highlighted several times by authoritative commentators, both Italian and international ones, as seen with the new security bill, which has been discussed in the Senate in recent weeks”.
