98 GIULIANI AND GAGGIO v. ITALY JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS one had been within his field of vision at the moment he fired the shots. If we are to believe this statement – which was made by M.P. himself and the credibility of which was never called into question by the domestic courts – the implication is that the carabiniere did not see the assailant approaching with a fire extinguisher and did not aim at him. Article 52 of the Italian Criminal Code (“the CC”) states that persons who commit an offence may claim self-defence if they were forced to commit the offence by the need to defend their rights against a real danger. That need implies a subjective perception of the existence of such danger, as demonstrated by the fact that Italian law (Article 55 of the CC) provides for the possibility of prosecuting the perpetrator of the offence for unintentional homicide where he or she, as a result of negligence or of a mistaken but punishable assessment of the situation, oversteps the limits “dictated by necessity”. It would follow that the shots were motivated by M.P.'s attempts to defend himself not against Carlo Giuliani's unlawful action but against the overall danger created by the demonstrators' attack on the jeep. 4. It remains to be determined whether M.P.'s reaction was “proportionate” to the danger he sought to avert. To that end, establishing the trajectory of the shot fired by M.P. was of decisive importance. While the imminent threat of an object with considerable destructive potential being thrown justifies firing at chest height, an overall state of danger can only justify firing shots into the air (see, in particular, Kallis and Androulla Panayi v. Turkey, no. 45388/99, § 63, 27 October 2009, where the Court stated that the opening of fire should, whenever possible, be preceded by warning shots). If M.P. did not see anyone targeting him directly and individually, his response should have been aimed at dispersing rather than eliminating the assailants. 5. In other words, only the firing of warning shots would be compatible with the requirements of Article 2 of the Convention in its substantive aspect were it to transpire that M.P.'s “defence” was not justified by the need to halt an attack liable to result in immediate consequences of a serious nature which could not be averted by means of less radical action (the “real danger of an unjust attack” referred to in Article 52 of the CC). This follows from the test of “absolute necessity”, which dictates that the force used must be strictly proportionate to the aims pursued (see Andronicou and Constantinou v. Cyprus, 9 October 1997, § 171, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-VI). If methods less dangerous to human life can reasonably be regarded as sufficient to achieve the aim of “defence of any person from unlawful violence” or “for the purpose of quelling a riot”, then those methods must be deployed. Moreover, the Italian Criminal Code (Article 52 in fine) appears to adopt a similar approach in requiring that the “defensive response [be] proportionate to the attack”. 6. In short, if M.P. was seeking to defend himself against the demonstrators' assault on the jeep rather than against the applicants' son