All seven African migrants arrested for attacking police officers and firefighters earlier this month at a migrant reception center in Milan's Via Aquila have been convicted.
Seven youths of African origin have been handed prison terms of up to one year and six months for attacking policemen and firefighters on August 4.
The migrants had staged a violent protest at a CAS reception center for asylum seekers, attacking policemen and firefighters who had intervened to extinguish a fire.
The Milan court agreed to hold a fast-track trial, as requested by the defense lawyer of the defendant who had thrown a brick against firefighters. The youth was sentenced to eight months in jail for hurling the brick, which hit a fire engine.
The other six defendants were sentenced to a prison term of one year and a half each for causing injury and resisting arrest. The defendants were not handed suspended sentences, as requested by their attorney. Prosecutors had requested a two-year jail term for each defendant while their attorney, Luca Orunesu, had asked for their acquittal.
The judge's decision
Judge Giuseppe Fazio ruled in favor of the defense's request to ''distinguish between the different positions'' of the defendants, Orunesu said. The youth sentenced to eight months in jail was acquitted of the charges of causing personal injury and resisting arrest while he was convicted of causing damage.
The other six defendants were instead acquitted of damage charges and sentenced to one year and six months for causing harm and resisting the officers. Their lawyer also said that as soon as the judge will publish the sentence's motivation, within the next 30 days, he will appeal the sentence.
Orunesu will in particular request a suspended sentence given that some of his clients are under 21 and ''that they have been living in our country for at least a couple of years and nobody violated Italian legislation."
"I don't believe that they are responsible," explained the attorney, summing up his defense strategy during the trial, which was not public. "However, even if they were, they should be handed suspended sentences given that they did not have a police record and they are very young and because of the exceptional context in which the facts took place, with a young boy who was trapped in a room when the fire broke out," he concluded.