Bologna, July 26, 2026 – “We’re coming to get you. You and your children”. And again: “We’ll shoot you” or “we know where you live”, complete with the (no longer current) home address of Bologna mayor Matteo Lepore. Who, after the complaint filed with the police headquarters following the death threats received online, ended up under escort, with two officers and a car (not armored) that will follow him during his movements. A surveillance service, albeit low-level, assigned to the Bolognese mayor by the Prefecture, following the spiral of social ferocity he had fallen into. Keyboard warriors unleashed themselves on social media after the night of guerrilla warfare that devastated the historic center. Not only comments of indignation and insults for having called the protest in Piazza del Nettuno for the death of Abderrahim Fakir, but also real death threats.
Haters’ messages and precedents
Messages – sent by users on Instagram, Facebook, and also via email – for which Lepore filed a complaint with the police headquarters, following which it was decided to subject the mayor to the fourth level of escort, an institutional measure for a low risk, but which nevertheless provides for the provision of two officers and an unarmored vehicle. This decision will very likely also be discussed at the meeting of the Committee for public order and safety. A measure to which the number one of Palazzo d’Accursio had never been subjected, although control services had already been activated for him in the past, which have now been intensified.
This in light of the complaint, which brought under police scrutiny a ‘package’ of about ten threats, which arrived at the mayor’s social media and email profiles, publicly, such as in comments under his posts or exclamations appearing in ‘anti-Lepore’ groups, and also privately. Also for the affair of the Besta middle school, in San Donato, and the Children’s Museum, in Pilastro, the mayor had been publicly shamed.
The investigations and bipartisan solidarity
Investigators are already working to trace the identities of those who sent those alarming comments to the mayor. “Why don’t you kill yourself?” is one of the contents, followed by others: “We know where you live,” writes a user, citing the democrat’s old residential address. “We’ll throw bombs at you,” another reads. Up to the comparisons with Fakir, the 42-year-old who disappeared in Pilastro a week ago: “Lepore, we want you like Fakir,” “does he happen to have an escort? We’ll find tailor-made agents for him.” To these ‘warnings’ of death arriving from haters’ profiles, an infinite number of comments under his latest posts are added, all related to the Pilastro affair. Fakir’s family, through their lawyer Fabio Anselmo, sided with the mayor: “Fakir’s end cannot be wished upon anyone. The deepest solidarity for the cowardly insults and threats suffered.” Solidarity is bipartisan: Coalizione Civica rallies around the mayor, defined as a “scapegoat” in this climate of hatred. The Bolognese group of Fratelli d’Italia and the Lega are also supportive.
