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Human rights advocates and Italian opposition lawmakers urgently sought explanations on Monday following the death of a Moroccan man held face-down on July 19 by law enforcement officers while crying out for assistance, whereas coalition government figures publicly backed the security personnel.
Abderrahim Fakir, a 42-year-old from Morocco who moved to Italy when he was 5, died Sunday in Bologna while being forcibly held down by two police officers, according to a video shared widely on Italian media.
In the video, Fakir, who reportedly suffered from heart issues and asthma, repeatedly calls out "aiuto, aiuto, basta" ("help, help, that's enough") as the officers sit on him and ambulance workers look on.
After he stops moving, the police bind his ankles together. Only after a moment or two do they and the ambulance workers check his vital signs, the video shows.
Called to the scene by local residents concerned by Fakir’s erratic behavior, the police officers had told the ambulance personnel that he was "having a psychiatric episode", according to media reports.
"You can't die like this," Fakir's sister Khadija told the Corriere della Sera daily. "The police have to protect us. If someone is agitated, you have to calm them down... not kill them like a dog," she said.
The incident has been likened to George Floyd's murder in the United States six years ago, and also prompted comparisons with tactics used by the US's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for border control and immigration enforcement, under President Donald Trump.
Italy's far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini defended the police, while Galeazzo Bignami, head of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party in parliament's lower house, praised the officers' "professional conduct."
But Sen. Ilaria Cucchi, whose brother died in custody in 2009, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) she was sickened by the "solidarity and thanks" expressed to police after such an "inhumane act."
Cucchi, a member of the opposition Greens and Left alliance (AVS) party, slammed far-right Meloni and her coalition government, saying their "policies seeped in hatred and racism" have fostered a climate of violence.
Francesco Boccia, head of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) in the Senate, told the Repubblica daily that "if the right wants to import the ICE model, this is the wrong country for it. We have democratic antibodies".
Prosecutors in Bologna have opened a probe and have requested the officers' body cam footage. Lawyer Barbara Spinelli told the ANSA news agency that she had met Fakir last year, when he applied to renew his permit to stay.
He was "a very kind, well-educated, respectful person" who was in Italy legally, but who worried about being expelled.
"I told him: 'We are in Italy, a democratic country. Here, the police respect the rules," she said. "I don't know how I will ever again manage to tell someone they don't need to be afraid," she added.
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