- LONDON (AFP) - Almost a week
after the explosive Group of eight meeting in Genoa, the accompanying violence
was still dominating much of the British press Friday, as protestors returned
home to tell of their beatings by police.
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- The Daily Telegraph lent much of its front page to reports
of brutality, accompanied by a picture of journalist Mark Covell, who is
still too badly injured to fly back to Britain.
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- Speaking from his hospital bed in the Italian port of
Genoa, Covell, 33, told the newspaper: "All I knew was that if I kept
one eye open I could survive, I did it to convince myself I was alive."
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- He said he was beaten up three times, leaving him with
all the ribs on his left side broken, 10 teeth missing, his lung punctured
in several places and a suspected ruptured spleen.
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- Covell, one of five Britons to be arrested during the
anti-capitalist demonstrations, said he had deliberately remained on one
side while being attacked.
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- "I then lost consciousness. I thought, 'My God,
this is it. I am going to die'," he told The Daily Telegraph.
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- While Covell remained in hospital, protestors Jonathan
Blair, 38, Daniel McQuillan, 35, Richard Moth, 32, and Nicola Doherty,
27, flew back to Heathrow after being detained for four days.
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- Battered and bruised, the four, who were among 93 people
arrested on Saturday night when police burst into a school being used to
help coordinate the G8 summit protests, spoke of "screaming and beating"
and "grown people hiding under desks".
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- McQuillan told The Times: "There were five or six
policemen and one struck me on the head. I rolled on to the floor on my
left side and they continued beating us."
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- McQuillan -- pictured in most British newspapers Friday
holding up his bloodied shirt that he says is evidence of savage police
beating -- added that after being arrested they were given no food for
36 hours and made to sleep in a room open to the outside without bedding.
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- The Guardian carried a statement issued by the four protestors
at Heathrow which compared the room they were first held in to a "field
hospital in the Crimean war".
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- It continued: "Most of those present required hospital
treatment. Several were carried out on stretchers. People suffered broken
bones and head injuries and many were covered in blood."
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- Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced late
Thursday that he would investigate claims of police brutality at the G8
summit.
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- Straw promised to "press for an explanation",
which was a marked departure from the government's earlier reluctance to
question the tactics of the Italian police.
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