GIULIANI AND GAGGIO v. ITALY JUDGMENT
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Grams, cited above, and Menson and Others v. the United Kingdom (dec.),
no. 47916/99, ECHR 2003-V).
(b) The Chamber judgment
271. The Chamber observed that the scan performed on Carlo Giuliani's
body had revealed the presence of a metal fragment lodged in his head
which was not extracted or recorded, although analysing it would have been
important “for the purposes of the ballistic analysis and for the
reconstruction of events”. Moreover, the doctors performing the autopsy
had not “explicitly stated whether the shot had been direct”. Crucial
questions had therefore remained unanswered, leading the public
prosecutor's office to describe the autopsy report as “superficial”. These
shortcomings had been aggravated by the fact that authorisation had been
given to cremate the body before the content of the expert medical report
was known, preventing any further tests from being carried out. The
Chamber also deplored the short notice given to the applicants for the
purposes of appointing an expert of their choosing to participate in the
autopsy. Accordingly, it held that there had been a violation of Article 2 of
the Convention in its procedural aspect (see paragraphs 245-251 of the
Chamber judgment).
2. Failure to institute proceedings with a view to establishing possible
liability on the part of certain police officers
(a) The parties' submissions
(i) The applicants
272. In the applicants' submission, Article 2 of the Convention had been
breached also on account of the absence of an administrative or criminal
investigation into the conduct of the law-enforcement agencies at the G8 in
Genoa. An investigation could have shed light on responsibilities within the
chain of command and enabled administrative sanctions to be imposed if
necessary. The absence of any administrative investigation had been
confirmed by the Government (see paragraph 280 below) and by the
statements made by Colonel Truglio at the “trial of the twenty-five”.
273. It followed that no assessment had been made at any point of the
authorities' overall liability with regard to the shortcomings in the planning,
coordination and conduct of the operations and their inability to ensure
proportionate use of force in order to disperse the demonstrators. There had
been no scrutiny of the instructions issued to the law-enforcement officers
or the reasons why the latter had been issued only with live ammunition.
The prosecuting authorities had never considered whether M.P.'s superior
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