Berlusconi to answer Genoa critics

Police lead away a man injured in the riots in Genoa

ROME, Italy -- Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is due to make a statement in the upper house of parliament about police handling of the G8 summit riots.

Italy's conservative majority has rejected opposition calls for an investigation into alleged police brutality during last weekend's clashes in Genoa.

The rejection comes despite the growing sense of anger in other European countries at policing in Genoa. German lawmakers, who visited activists still detained in Genoa, are calling police tactics last weekend brutal and arbitrary.

And in Paris, an estimated 1,500 people marched on the Italian embassy -- but were prevented access by riot police. Similar demonstrations took place in Marseilles, Lyon and Toulouse.

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Italy's foreign ministry says it has received no official protests from other governments.

Although the Italian government is not opening an investigation, Italian prosecutors are examining allegations of police brutality. Genoa's police chief says officers will be punished if they committed abuses.

One person was killed and more than 200 were injured in clashes between police and anti-capitalist protestors.

One Briton still recovering in hospital told CNN how police used him "as a human football."

Mark Covell suffered broken ribs, a punctured lung and a ruptured spleen in a police raid on a Genoa school being used by a group coordinating protests.

He said he was attacked by about 40 police who knocked him to the ground and "beat the crap out of me."

Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said he had received assurances from the Italian government at the "highest level" that the allegations of police malpractice made by the demonstrators would be properly investigated.

"We have spoken to the Italian administration at the highest level and they have agreed that these allegations will be fully investigated as part of the wider investigation into police malpractice by the Genoa Public Prosecutor," Straw said.

"The Italians have shown consistently that they live by the rule of law. They have given these undertakings and we expect them to abide by them."

One protester, 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani, was shot dead by police and about 230 people were injured in two days of violence in the Mediterranean port town. Police initially arrested 280, many of them foreign nationals, al though many have now been freed. Damage has been estimated at $45 million.

Giuliani was the first person to die in a demonstration in Italy in 25 years and the first ever to die in violence linked the anti-globalisation protests that have become a feature of international summits in the past two years.

A judicial source told the Reuters news agency that prosecutors would investigate possible charges of assault, bodily harm and abuse of office by police on activists detained in jails.

Other inquiries are concentrating on a police raid on a school used as sleeping quarters of umbrella protest group the Genoa Social Forum (GSF) and alleged beatings at a police station.

They are part of a whirlwind of investigations after demonstrations drew more than 200,000 protesters to Genoa.

Hans-Christian Stroebele, a senior politician with the German Greens, visited German activists detained in Genoa.

She told Germany's FAZ business radio: "There has been mistreatment in police stations which reminds me of the depictions in Argentina during the military dictatorship."