Protests Erupted in Bologna After a Man Died During a Police Arrest

Fakir had lived in Italy since he was five and owned a small moving and cleaning company. Human-rights advocates and opposition parties demanded that the authorities immediately explain the circumstances of his death.

In video footage circulated by Italian media, two police officers restrain Fakir by sitting on him while ambulance workers look on. Fakir, who reportedly had heart problems and asthma, repeatedly shouts: “Aiuto, aiuto, basta”—“Help, help, stop.”

When Fakir stops moving, the officers bind his ankles and only later join medical workers in checking his vital signs, the video shows. Prosecutors have opened an investigation and requested footage from the officers’ body cameras.

“No one should die like this,” the victim’s sister, Khadija, told Corriere della Sera. “The police are supposed to protect us. If someone is agitated, they should calm him down, not kill him like a dog.”

Italian media reported that residents of the northeastern Pilastro neighborhood called police shortly after noon on Sunday because they were concerned by Fakir’s erratic and aggressive behavior.

The responding officers soon called an ambulance and initially tried to calm him. They then used pepper spray, forced him to the ground and restrained him while attempting to apply handcuffs. The officers told medical workers that Fakir was experiencing “a psychiatric episode.”

Late Monday, protesters threw firecrackers near police buildings. Law-enforcement officers responded with tear gas and water cannons. Another group of demonstrators staged a sit-in in a square while holding a photograph of Fakir, Ansa reports.

In Italy, the incident has been compared with the killing of George Floyd in the United States six years ago, and the police response with the methods used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Donald Trump.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi urged the public to await the investigation’s findings.

“Anyone who insults the police shows that they trust neither our law-enforcement agencies nor our justice system. They should first establish what happened,” the minister said on public television.

European Affairs Minister Tommaso Foti called the chants of “Police are murderers” and “The whole world hates you” heard at the protest “disgraceful.”

Far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini also defended the police. Galeazzo Bignami, parliamentary leader of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party in the lower house, praised the officers for their “professional conduct.”

Senator Ilaria Cucchi, whose brother died in custody in 2009, told Agence France-Presse that she was outraged by the “solidarity and gratitude” expressed toward the police after such an “inhuman act.”

Cucchi, who represents the opposition Greens and Left Alliance, accused Meloni’s government of fostering a climate of violence through “policies steeped in hatred and racism.”

Francesco Boccia, leader of the center-left Democratic Party’s group in the Senate, also criticized the authorities.

“If the right wants to import the ICE model, it has chosen the wrong country. We have democratic antibodies,” he told La Repubblica.

Lawyer Barbara Spinelli told Ansa that she met Fakir last year when he sought to renew his residence permit. She described him as “a very kind, well-mannered and respectful man” who was legally present in Italy but feared deportation.

“I told him, ‘We are in Italy, a democratic country. Here, the police follow the rules,’” Spinelli said. “I do not know how I can now tell anyone that they have nothing to fear.”