For a brief moment I thought that the death this week in Bologna of a Moroccan, face-down on the tarmac, after being restrained by not just one but two police officers sitting on top of him, might provoke a similar explosion of outrage as the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The next night there was a riot in Bologna during which the rioters brandished placards claiming that the death of Abderrahim Fakir, 42, was an ‘omicidio di stato’ (state murder), chanted ‘assassini’ at the police and attacked them. The police retaliated with tear gas and water cannons as the rioters torched cars and smashed shop windows. Sixty-four police officers were injured. It is still early days but this was nevertheless small beer compared to the massive wave of urban destruction unleashed by the death of Floyd in America.
It is still early days but this was nevertheless small beer compared to the massive wave of urban destruction unleashed by the death of Floyd in America
That nothing much has happened in Italy must mean, I feel, that the forces of woke are no longer as powerful as they were in 2020. Or else that this is Italy and not America and thus such forces here do not command the same clout.
The death of this Moroccan at about midday on Sunday happened in an already highly charged atmosphere in Italy regarding the issue of law and order. Just two days earlier the 72-year-old owner of a jewellery shop near Genoa, Mario Roggero, began a 14-year jail sentence for murder. He had shot dead two robbers outside his shop in 2021 who had handcuffed his wife inside the shop and were making their getaway with the booty.
Elon Musk has tweeted on X, ‘This is insane! The judge and the prosecutor in this case are the ones who deserve this conviction.’
Italian law, as in virtually every country in Europe plus most of America, is reasonably clear on this in theory at least: while you can use proportionate force in self-defence against an intruder inside your property, shooting dead an intruder who is outside your property and running away cannot be regarded as self-defence, let alone proportionate.
Despite this, Carlo Nordio, the justice minister in Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government, has asked the Italian president Giorgio Mattarella to consider pardoning Roggero.
Nearly 70 per cent of Italians – according to one opinion poll this week – think Mattarella should do so. But he is unlikely to comply. There is talk, however, that a court might allow Roggero to serve at least part of his sentence under house arrest.
Meanwhile, two thirds of Italians, according to the same poll, believe that the current laws on the use of force ‘excessively limit’ the rights of citizens to defend themselves, their families and their property.
Matteo Salvini, deputy prime minister and leader of the Lega, the junior party in the government coalition, who visited Roggero in prison in Milan, told the press: ‘He believes, in my view correctly, that he is the victim of an unjust aggression. I would be proud to have him as a candidate to represent the Italians.’
Salvini’s party has tabled a new law to bypass the principle of proportionate force in self-defence and permit instead ‘any reaction’ by a person threatened by an armed attacker. But this – it would inevitably be argued – would not apply in the case of the Genoa jeweller as his attackers were fleeing the scene. Regardless, neither Meloni nor Antonio Tajani, leader of the third main government coalition party, Forza Italy, are likely to agree.
Salvini’s reaction has of course sent the Italian left into fits of holier-than-thou moralising. The jeweller is a murderer – they insist – and must serve his time. As for Salvini, he is – as far as they are concerned – beyond the pale.
In the case of Fakir, however, there does seem to be a reluctance on their part to blame his death on a police state imposed by the Meloni government – even though they love to call her ‘extreme right’ and ‘the heir to Mussolini’. Or to turn it into a Black Lives Matter style mission.
I had thought that the forces of woke in Italy would unleash everything they had in their armoury, as they did when Floyd died in Minneapolis in May 2020. The death of Floyd led to widespread riots and looting, mass protests, and everyone around the world taking the knee, including of course our very own recently departed Sir Keir Starmer. The phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ entered our collective psyche. Chauvin was found guilty of murder and given a 22-year prison sentence.
This time, too, there are smart phone videos of what happened. The main video in this case was filmed from the balcony of a flat overlooking the scene. It shows the final five minutes of Fakir’s life with the two police officers straddling him as he lies face down on the tarmac with his arms behind his back handcuffed. It looks very bad indeed for the police.
He shouts repeatedly ‘Help!’, then falls silent and dies. Meanwhile four ambulance paramedics stand around doing nothing. Why? Another video of the same scene shows one of the two officers punching the Moroccan several times. A third video published in many newspapers this weekend shows a large bloodstain beneath his head.
Fakir, who latterly ran a small removals firm, came to Italy with his family from Morocco when he was seven. He had the odd conviction for drug dealing though nothing especially serious. But his attempts to get Italian citizenship had failed, his permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay) had expired and he feared it might not be renewed. His business was also in trouble.
Matteo Lepore, the left-wing mayor of Bologna – which has always been the command centre of the Italian communist and post-communist left – called for the people of Bologna to demonstrate in front of city hall to demand ‘truth and justice’.
Fakir’s niece, Yossra, in a tearful speech on Monday in front of the huge, largely peaceful crowd that had responded to the mayor’s invocation, said that their family likewise wanted ‘truth and justice’ though not ‘hatred and vendetta’.
But as Senator Galeazzo Bignami, of Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party, told the Senate on Tuesday:
‘We all want the truth… On justice permit me a reflection dear colleagues because in the moment you speak about justice you are saying that an injustice has been committed… and this is unacceptable because you are accusing the forces of law and order of killing a person deliberately.
‘Regardless of the fact that the Procura [Crown Prosecution Service] has said “be careful” as what you see [in the videos] is not all that which happened, you continue stubbornly to foment the piazza. Fratelli d’Italia has the courage … to call out with Christian name and surname those who are responsible for what happened there… It’s the Italian left! And all those who, day after day, foment hatred for the forces of law and order.’
As Bignami made clear, we do not yet know the full story.
We do not know what caused the police to do what they did except that Fakir had had some kind of psychotic fit and that before pinning him down on the ground they had pepper-sprayed him.
Residents had called the police because he was kicking garage doors and had headbutted and punched a car that had pulled up. There was speculation that he had taken drugs of some kind but it has now emerged that he had been to A&E in June after a similar though less dramatic episode.
In addition to his fears about being forced to return to Morocco, his family have said that he was depressed by the discovery of a ‘pathology’. He also suffered from asthma. He was not armed. There are reports that he bit one of the police officers.
Preliminary results of an autopsy begun on Friday reportedly found blood in his lungs and signs of crushing of his rib cage which would suggest that he died of suffocation.
Regardless of the politics, surely there has to be a more humane and less dangerous way for the police to restrain someone, however violent, especially if they are unarmed. Not just in Italy but in any country that calls itself civilised.
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