Demonstrations have erupted in Bologna, Italy, after Abderrahim Fakir died on Sunday while being restrained by police. Officers had been called following reports of a man behaving aggressively and damaging a vehicle.
Video shared on social media, deemed too distressing to publish, shows the 42-year-old repeatedly crying out “aiuto, aiuto, basta” (“Help, help, that’s enough”) as two officers sit on him while ambulance workers stand nearby. Fakir, a Moroccan-born entrepreneur who had lived in Italy since age five, had heart problems and asthma. The footage appears to show him gradually becoming motionless as officers bound his ankles together.
Police response and investigation
Officers reportedly called paramedics shortly after arriving and initially tried to calm Fakir before using pepper spray and restraining him while attempting to handcuff him. Police told ambulance workers he was “having a psychiatric episode”.
Prosecutors have opened an investigation into Fakir’s death and requested officers’ body camera footage. Human rights campaigners and Italy’s opposition parties have demanded urgent answers.
Family and public reaction
His sister, Khadija, told Corriere della Sera: “You can’t die like this. The police have to protect us. If someone is agitated, you have to calm them down.”
The death sparked protests across Bologna on Monday night, with thousands of demonstrators carrying signs reading “Justice for Fakir” and “State murders”. Some threw firecrackers near police buildings, while officers responded with tear gas and water cannon. Others staged a sit-down protest holding photographs of Fakir, according to Ansa news agency.
Comparisons and political fallout
The incident has drawn comparisons with George Floyd’s murder in the US and restraint tactics used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Donald Trump.
Barbara Spinelli, a lawyer who met Fakir last year when he applied to renew his permit to stay, described him as “a very kind, well educated, respectful person” who was in Italy legally but worried about being expelled. She said: “I told him: ‘We are in Italy, a democratic country. Here the police respect the rules’ … I don’t know how I will ever again manage to tell someone they don’t need to be afraid.”
Ilaria Cucchi, a senator whose brother died in custody in 2009, told Agence France-Presse she was sickened by the “solidarity and thanks” expressed to police after such an “inhumane act”. Cucchi criticised Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her coalition government, saying their “policies seeped in hatred and racism” had fostered a climate of violence.
Francesco Boccia, head of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) in the Senate, told La Repubblica: “If the right wants to import the ICE model, this is the wrong country for it. We have democratic antibodies.”
Meloni said an investigation would be carried out “without prejudice”, but condemned the violence that broke out. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Piantedosi told public television: “Whoever makes insulting remarks against the police shows they have no trust in our law enforcement nor in our justice system [and] should look into what happened.”
