Bologna, September 3, 2026 – New witnesses have been heard, and soon the video reconstructing exactly what happened in those tragic moments on via Svevo, in Pilastro, on the morning of July 19, when Abderrahim Fakir, 42 years old, died after a police containment intervention, will be ready. The new video comes from a combination of the 3D reconstruction carried out at the scene and the videos shot that day by citizens and now available to the investigators.
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The inspection on via Svevo a month ago
On August 3, the investigators – that is, the Bologna Mobile Squad together with Chief Prosecutor Paolo Guido, Deputy Prosecutor Morena Plazzi, and Prosecutor Francesca Arienti – conducted an inspection on via Svevo with the Carabinieri of the RIS of Parma: on that occasion, drones and laser scanners were used to recreate the exact scene, reconstructed through the infrared web woven with a laser scanner to thus recreate a copy of the place where Fakir lost his life that day. These elements, combined with the various videos recorded that morning, will provide – this is the goal – an accurate picture of the events and the dynamics. Preliminary examinations on the 42-year-old’s body, carried out on July 24, revealed as main elements the presence of fresh blood in the lungs and a crushing.
The ongoing examinations and investigations
In addition to other ongoing investigations – the analysis of Fakir’s phone and that of the bodycam footage recorded in those hectic moments by the 23-year-old police officer – various forensic medical examinations are underway in addition to the autopsy. Recently, an examination on the heart was carried out (where fibrotic marks were reportedly seen) while, just yesterday in Pavia, at the office of Luca Morini, an expert in forensic toxicology and professor at Unipv, toxicological tests were performed.
The toxicological test
This test aims to determine how much cocaine was in Fakir’s blood at the time of death and when it was taken, as well as to establish whether Fakir had taken any medications. Professor Morini, moreover, previously followed in Bologna the case of Giampaolo Amato, former Virtus doctor sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of his wife and mother-in-law with a mix of drugs.
Fakir and cocaine. Lawyer Anselmo’s comment
And, regarding the drug positivity, lawyer Fabio Anselmo, legal counsel for Abderrahim’s family, writes a long post on Facebook: “The first cocaine test is positive and it will therefore be necessary to precisely determine the quantity, timing, and real impact of that substance, but for some it already seems enough to turn it into the explanation for everything, erasing what happened in front of a camera.” Yesterday “the toxicological verification operations began, with samples and analyses that will take several days.” Yet, lawyer Anselmo emphasizes, “there are already those, as I predicted from the start, who seem to have decided what the cause of Fakir’s death should be: cocaine. A conclusion ready even before the investigations, despite the terrible images of that footage, the screams of pain, that ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ pronounced while undergoing a violent and prolonged compression that ends with his death.”
And he refers to well-known cases of violence: “We know these patterns and we know how often they have been used even in other dramatic deaths, from Federico Aldrovandi to Riccardo Magherini, up to Stefano Cucchi – Anselmo continues on his social page – for whom even after the final conviction for manslaughter Matteo Salvini found a way to comment saying that ‘drugs are bad.’ One thing, however, is certain and it is neither seriously nor honestly possible to question it: drug or no drug, without that intervention, without that violent and prolonged compression, Fakir would not have died in that way and at that moment.”
Lawyer Bordoni’s reply
“Anselmo’s comment – the immediate reply of lawyer Gabriele Bordoni, who represents the two police officers who intervened on July 19 following citizens’ reports – I believe misses the mark entirely regarding the case, given that he compares it to Magherini’s and also to Aldrovandi’s case which he – the colleague – knows perfectly well are totally different from our case. Furthermore, complaining that there is someone assigning cocaine a decisive role in Fakir’s death should not surprise those who assigned it to an alleged crushing of Fakir’s body, of which there is currently no evidence. In other words, while the autopsy has already shown the presence of cocaine in Fakir’s blood, the crushing is not detected either from the very first autopsy results or from any of the available video footage.”
Six people under the scrutiny of the Prosecutor’s Office, registered in the preliminary notes register with model 45 bis (the so-called ‘shield law‘): these are the two officers from the Bolognina Pontevecchio Police Station and the four volunteers of the Red Cross with the Blsd (basic life support defibrillation) crew who intervened with the ambulance that morning, among them no doctors or nurses.
