GIULIANI AND GAGGIO v. ITALY JUDGMENT 31 128. The carabinieri in the jeep might well have feared that they would be subjected to an attempted lynching. The fact that the demonstrators surrounding them did not have Molotov cocktails and were therefore not in a position to set the vehicle on fire was a factor that could be appreciated with hindsight. The occupants of the jeep could not be blamed for having panicked. 129. Carlo Giuliani had probably been four metres from the jeep when he was shot down. M.P. had stated that he could only see what was happening inside the vehicle. When the shot was fired, he had been lying down with his feet pointing towards the rear door of the vehicle. He had pulled D.R. down on top of him and could not see his own hand; he was unable to say whether it had been inside or outside the jeep. In any event, he had fired upwards. 130. The District Court judgment mentions the statements made by the expert Marco Salvi, who performed the autopsy on Carlo Giuliani's body. Mr Salvi stated in particular that the trajectory of the fatal bullet indicated a direct shot and that the metal fragment lodged in the victim's body had been very difficult to find. The fragment, which had shown up on the scan (see paragraph 60 above), “must have been very small”; the experts had tried to locate it by going through the brain tissue section by section (per piani), although the latter had been damaged and engorged with blood. The more the experts worked, the more damaged the tissue had become. Given that the fragment was not a bullet and was of no use for ballistics purposes, the experts had considered it to be a minor detail (un particolare irrilevante) and had not pursued their search. 2. The appeal judgment 131. Twenty-four of the accused appealed against the first-instance judgment. In a judgment of 9 October 2009, deposited with the registry on 23 December 2009, the Genoa Court of Appeal partly upheld the convictions handed down by the District Court, increased some of the sentences and declared the prosecution of some of the offences time-barred. 132. Regarding the carabinieri attack on the Tute Bianche march, the Court of Appeal largely endorsed the view of the District Court. It observed that the carabinieri had encountered the march, which numbered around 10,000 persons, as a result of the route indicated to them by the control room. The front of the march, or “contact group”, had been made up of around twenty individuals, mostly members of Parliament, mayors, cultural figures and journalists. Behind them had been a series of Plexiglas protective devices, joined together; these were followed by the “head of the procession” made up of demonstrators equipped with helmets and shoulder and arm protectors. The march had not encountered the scenes of any clashes but had simply proceeded for about two kilometres without meeting any obstacle. The protective equipment showed that, although they were not