Askatasuna, 14 searches for the January clashes. The prosecutor requests 19 precautionary measures

Fourteen house searches in different parts of Italy, eight months after the procession that transformed Corso Regina Margherita into a field of clashes. Since the early hours of this morning, the Turin state police have been carrying out measures against militants from the opposing area, as part of the investigation into the events of 31 January, when the national demonstration against the eviction of the Askatasuna social center had degenerated into violence against the police.

In the same file the public prosecutor requested 19 precautionary measures for crimes that were allegedly committed during the procession.

The community center was evacuated on 18 December. The building on Corso Regina Margherita had remained occupied for around thirty years, and the demonstration at the end of January had been organized in three processions, starting from Porta Nuova, Porta Susa and Palazzo Nuovo. On the sidelines of the mobilization, groups of antagonists had attacked the agents with rockets, flares, paper bombs, stones and bottles. The riots continued for about two hours, concentrated mainly in the area of ​​the former site of the community centre, where masked demonstrators had set fire to bins and a police vehicle. The most serious episode involved a policeman, surrounded and attacked by a group of antagonists and hit with a hammer.

The judicial front opened in the days immediately following. On February 4, the investigating judge of Turin, at the validation hearing, released two of the three arrested for the incidents, arrested for resisting a public official, with the obligation to sign. The Prosecutor's Office then challenged the judge's decision not to order precautionary custody in prison for the three antagonists, a choice welcomed by the Sap police union.

Today's operation adds to a series of measures that have affected the Askatasuna area in recent months. On 19 February, Digos had carried out 18 precautionary measures, including five house arrests against members of the social centre, due to violence and road and railway blockades during the pro-Palestine demonstrations of the previous autumn; the prosecutors had requested house arrest for all 18 suspects.