The paramilitary police officer who shot and killed a young protester during the violent clashes at the G8 meeting in Genoa two years ago was in hospital last night suffering from severe multiple injuries, after a road accident which his lawyer described as "very suspicious".
Mario Placanica, 25, was acquitted of murder in May following a lengthy investigation into the incident in Genoa in July 2001. The judge decided he had acted in legitimate self-defence.
Mr Placanica, an officer of the Carabinieri, was driving home from lunch with friends when his car left the road and hit a tree. He threw himself from the vehicle before impact, but suffered numerous fractures and three crushed vertebrae.
Doctors at the hospital in Catanzaro, southern Italy, where he was being treated, said Mr Placanica might be paralysed for life.
Mr Placanica was in a police vehicle at the height of the Genoa riots when it was approached by Carlo Giuliani. Photographs show the protester holding a fire extinguisher with both hands, as if he was about to throw it through the back window of the vehicle. Two shots were fired from inside and Giuliani fell dying to the ground.
The subsequent investigation and trial were packed with twists and turns. Giuliani had been no more than a few metres away from the vehicle when he was hit. Yet ballistic experts reported that the bullet that killed him had ricocheted off plaster. Their conclusion was crucial to Mr Placanica's acquittal.
The defendant, who suffered frequent bouts of depression, changed his version of events four times and in July 2002 told a television interviewer: "I've been used to cover up the responsibility of others." His remark prompted some in the anti-globalisation movement to speculate that there was more to the apparently straightforward killing than had emerged.
The conspiracy theories that have evolved since then are now bound to multiply. Mr Placanica's lawyer, Vittorio Colosimo, said his client, who was on sick-leave because of his depression, had visited him before the accident and told him he thought that someone was playing around with the wheels of his car.
Mr Colosimo said that, from his hospital bed, Mr Placanica had recounted how "the car ceased to respond; there were problems with the steering". The lawyer said he had asked for an official, expert inspection of the vehicle.
The father of the dead protester, Giuliano Giuliani, said: "I do not rule out the possibility that this odd accident may have been caused deliberately.
"On more than one occasion, my wife and I have said that we feared for the young man because of all [his] contradictory statements ... which showed that something very different happened from that which we were led to believe."
Mr Colosimo's fellow defence counsel at the trial, Giuseppe Gallo, dismissed the speculation: "It was just an accident," he said.
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