Italy convicts senior police for G8 Genoa violence

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian appeals court, overturning a previous verdict, sentenced several senior police officers to up to 5 years in prison for assaults on protesters during the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa and a subsequent cover-up.

The court in the northern Italian port city imposed a total of 85 years in prison on 25 officers late on Tuesday for a bloody late-night attack on anti-globalisation protesters at a high school that left 63 people in need of hospital treatment.

Police said at the time the protesters had attacked security forces shortly before the raid and that weapons had been found at the Armando Diaz school. Subsequent investigations, however, showed many of the protesters were sleeping when police broke into the school, were defenceless and did not react violently.

An initial trial two years ago handed down 13 convictions to low-ranking police, but exonerated more senior officers for the raid, which one key witness described as a "butchery".

The court found that police planted Molotov cocktails at the school to incriminate the protesters and staged a knife attack.

The heaviest sentence -- 5 years -- was handed down to the flying squad officer who led the raid, Vincenzo Canterini.

Francesco Gratteri, the head of police criminal investigation, and Giovanni Luperi, who now holds a senior job in Italian intelligence, both received four years.

"We cannot forget this systematic and indiscriminate violence," public prosecutor Pio Machiavello said.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government back the police officers throughout. They retain a third round of appeals under Italian law, meaning that none are likely to actually serve any time in prison under Italy's statute of limitations.

In the meantime, all of them would remain in their jobs, said Under-Secretary of the Interior Ministry Alfredo Mantovano.

The former deputy police chief of Genoa -- who was in the job at the time of the Genoa meeting -- described the scene in the school as a "butchery" and said officers ignored orders to stop hitting defenceless protesters on the ground.

The Group of Eight summit in Genoa was one of the most violent meetings of the club of rich nations, which is habitually dogged by protests by anti-globalisation groups.

One protester was killed in a separate incident but it was the attack on the high school -- in which 82 people were hurt, among them Italian, British, Polish and Irish -- that is now seen as a symbol of the authorities' violent overreaction.

(Reporting by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Mark Heinrich)