Clashes over Fakir; 12 protesters under investigation

The Bologna Public Prosecutor’s Office has officially opened an investigation involving 12 suspects in connection with the clashes between demonstrators and the police that took place on the evening of 20 July, in protest at the death of Abderrahim Fakir, the 42-year-old who died the day before in the Pilastro district during a police stop. The investigation is being led by Public Prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso, and those under investigation are charged, on various counts, with resisting a public official, making false statements and causing damage.

Among them is also the 20-year-old who was arrested during the riots and then released the following day, subject to a ban on entering the Metropolitan City of Bologna, following a decision by Judge Claudia Gualtieri at the preliminary hearing. His trial is due to begin on 9 September.

Later today, lawyer Gabriele Bordoni, who is representing the two police officers listed in the preliminary register 45 bis in connection with Fakir’s death, will submit a request to the Bologna Public Prosecutor’s Office asking it to consider extending the IT forensic analysis (in the form of non-repeatable examinations) already ordered by the prosecutors on the 42-year-old Moroccan man’s mobile phone to also include the videos acquired by the investigators in connection with the case.

There are about fifteen videos, including the bodycam footage from one of the two police officers, which lasts about forty minutes. According to Bordoni, an expert analysis of the videos would make it possible to place the footage in chronological order, effectively creating a filmed account from start to finish, whilst improving the picture and sound quality. The appointment to commission the mobile phone analysis from IT engineer Giuseppe Ferraro is already scheduled for tomorrow morning, and on that occasion the Public Prosecutor’s Office will also decide on the application submitted by Bordoni.

In response to the request to entrust the investigation into the death to a police force other than the Mobile Squad, the Bologna Public Prosecutor’s Office has stated that ‘the best guarantee of impartiality and of maintaining a distance between the facts and those conducting the investigation is the coordination of the public prosecutors’ who are, in fact, “a guarantee of the impartiality of the investigations, which are overseen by a panel of magistrates”, namely Public Prosecutor Domenico Ambrosino and Francesca Arienti, together with Deputy Public Prosecutor Morena Plazzi. Just yesterday, Fabio Anselmo, the lawyer representing Fakir’s family, had announced that he had asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office “for the investigations” into the death of the 42-year-old Moroccan man, who died on 19 July during a police operation, to be “entrusted to another investigative body”.