UPDATE: in July 2017 the Court declared that Free Trieste’s demonstration was not subversive, read more HERE
Trieste’s Prosecution Office concluded preliminary investigations about Free Trieste’s 10 February 2014 demonstration. The event’s purpose was defending Trieste’ Northern Free Port.
Instead, the Prosecution seeks that 19 of the investigated participants be convicted for taking part in an unauthorized demonstration in which the gaps to enter the Northern Free Port were seemingly blocked for 10 hours.
The Northern Free Port is a strategic sector of Trieste’s international Free Port. Furthermore, it is a State Corporation of the Free Territory of Trieste under the 1947 Italian Peace Treaty and UNSC Resolution S/RES/16 (1947).
Free Trieste organized the event specifically to protest the Northern Free Port’s special free zone regime.
A free zone regime suspended by the Government’s Commissioner. In breach of her obligations. She should represent the Italian Government, administer the present-day Free Territory, and protect its international Free Port. Even if it means withstanding the local establishment’s speculative interests.
Yet, Public Prosecutor Federico Frezza claims that 19 of the about 400 participants organized a “seditious gathering” violating public security laws. Also, he says, since they don’t recognize Italian sovereignty over Trieste, their demonstration is “intrinsically and decidedly subversive in nature“.
The public security laws addressed in the indictment are the Italian Kingdom’s 1931 special laws. Laws dating back to the Fascist era, incompatible with the present-day Free Territory by virtue of its independence. Both the 1947 Treaty in Peace and the Orders of its first British-US Government confirm this incompatibility.
Furthermore, the alleged crimes took place within Trieste’ Free Port and the Port Authority – the body in charge of the port’s provisional administration – filed no case against the demonstration.
The people of the Free Territory of Trieste are going to stand trial for defending the rule of law. Their own, but also the rules-based international order, set at the end of WWII. This is an unfair trial indeed.
It should be the administering Italian authorities to stand trial, it was their violations that made the demonstration necessary in the first place.
Instead, claiming to defend Italy’s (long-lost) sovereignty over the present-day Free Territory, the same authorities seek to punish law-abiding citizens.
Forgetting that those people stood not only for Trieste, but also for compliance with Italian law, and for the rights of more than 20 States over Trieste’s international Free Port. Including Italy.
Maybe those authorities would rather hand over Trieste’s Northern Free Port to the mafias. Sure enough, we won’t let it happen.
Translated from blog “Ambiente e Legalità” – Environment and Legality by Roberto Giurastante