Shocking video of a dead fakir lying in a large pool of blood

A large pool of blood is flowing from the back of his neck towards the centre of the road. Other red streaks mar the face of a dead man. The lifeless body is that of Abderrahim Fakir and a new video shows him after his death, lying on his back, with his mouth wide open and that pool of blood which had never previously come to light. “Before he was thrown to the ground, Fakir’s face and head were intact,” thunders the man’s lawyer, Fabio Anselmo, going on to explain that he is unable to interpret the presence of the blood “because I do not carry out forensic reconstructions”.

“He injured the back of his head whilst crawling along the ground,” replied the lawyer for the police officers listed in the 45 bis register in connection with the death of the 42-year-old man last Sunday, during an arrest in the Pilastro district of Bologna. This is the same neighbourhood where a large march organised by collectives and committees is expected to take place tomorrow, one week on from the clashes between protesters and the police in the centre of Bologna. However, it is the new video – also recorded from the window of one of the flats on Via Svevo – that is causing controversy, as it shows the events following Fakir’s death. A forensic officer approaches the body, still wrapped in a sheet and with his ankles tied – just as they had been during the arrest – and uncovers it. A pool of blood is clearly visible beneath the back of his neck, appearing to originate directly from his skull. This theory has inevitably sparked a heated exchange between Fakir’s defence team and that of the police officers who restrained him last Sunday.

“How did all that blood end up in his lungs? He inhaled it because they beat him. It’s not external blood. What’s cocaine got to do with it? Cocaine doesn’t cause all this,” explains Fabio Anselmo. The bloodstain, replies Gabriele Bordoni, comes “from the back of the head”, which the victim injured “whilst crawling along the ground”, whilst the blood on his face consists of “streaks that ran downwards when he was face down”. “There is a single wound that Fakir inflicted on himself whilst being restrained,” explains the lawyer, and it is “at the back of the head”, when he bit the officer’s leg, “he crawled along the ground and scratched himself. Then, when the pepper spray was used, he recoiled quickly and, as he pulled back, injured the back of his head again.” These reconstructions will, of course, be scrutinised by the investigators who are attempting to piece together exactly how and when the events unfolded last Sunday afternoon.

The person who is convinced that during the detention, not only were police protocols breached but also the provisions of the European Court of Human Rights, is, in fact, the former president of the Court of Bologna, Francesco Maria Caruso. A magistrate who, during his career, also handled the case of Federico Aldrovandi, which has been repeatedly cited in the wake of the Pilastro incident. “Fakir’s death appears to have resulted from prolonged pressure being applied to the victim’s face and chest by two officers who pinned him to the ground, ignoring his cries for help, with the assistance of a third member of the public. This action is prohibited by the police protocols themselves,” he writes on social media. The officers – the magistrate concludes – do not need “shields but adequate tools, skills, training and staffing levels”.

According to Anselmo, a long-standing defender of the Cucchi family and now standing alongside Fakir’s relatives, “we are faced with a pointless circus, where we are simply playing out a script”. “It was supposed to be in two acts, or at least three,” he remarks, “but instead it will be just half an act and that’s it. Then the curtain will fall. This is Salvini’s legal shield.” Meanwhile, on the very day that the mayor of Bologna, Matteo Lepore, filed a complaint regarding threats received online, a single comment on Facebook led to the transfer of a Carabinieri sergeant. “One down,” Walter Lombardi had written on social media commenting on Fakir’s death. He then invoked the Duce, adding “boom boom boom”. The officer, who was on duty with the Bologna mobile patrol, is reported to have been transferred to Imola, where he has already taken up his post.