Bologna, July 22, 2026 – Around the ‘live’ death of Abderrahim Fakir, which anyone could see – and hear – in the terrible video circulated online, many doubts and aspects remain to be clarified. And it is to untangle these knots – essential points to understand how and why the 42-year-old stopped struggling, and then breathing, while he was lying on the ground, handcuffed, on the asphalt of the Pilastro neighborhood in Bologna after the police’s containment intervention – that the Public Prosecutor’s Office will launch an investigation into the methods used by the police, to verify whether they complied with the guidelines of the Viminale.
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Where the investigations are focused: police and healthcare workers
The investigations are not only focused on the six people – the two police officers and the four healthcare workers – who were present in via Svevo at the time of the tragedy and who have been registered with the model 45 bis, the so-called ‘shield-norm’, a novelty introduced by the security decree and which implies, in other words, that they are being investigated without being formally charged: the investigations now also extend to those who were not on site and intervened remotely. It is now being verified how the emergency communication occurred and why ‘upstream’ (from the 118 operations center to the medical-link) it was not opted to send a team with a doctor or nurse. That morning, the police called 118 reporting “a subject in psychiatric crisis”: a green code was activated and an ambulance with a BLSD (basic life support defibrillation) crew arrived in via Svevo, among the four volunteers, no doctor or nurse.
Fakir screamed “help, all of Pilastro wants to kill me”
The Public Prosecutor’s Office also wants to clarify the behavior of the volunteers on the field and the timings. “What can be inferred from that video is that when the officers got up while he was agonizing, perhaps he was not yet dead, and we perceive this from the dialogue of the 118 operators by listening carefully – states Fabio Anselmo, lawyer for Fakir’s family at the conference promoted by Avs in the Senate –. If that were true, this whole tragedy would take on even darker and more terrible contours. In the video, no one helps him and no one unties him, hands and feet, explain to me why.”
Investigators have acquired other videos from citizens and also from cameras in the area, in addition to the one already online and the footage from the bodycam of one of the two officers. The approximately 50 minutes in which everything happened have thus been reconstructed. And now, from the report of the two police officers, the reason why Fakir was thrown to the ground by the officers at a certain point emerges. When the patrol car arrives, Fakir is out of his mind, lying on the ground, screaming “help, all of Pilastro wants to kill me”.
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Then he gets up and goes towards the stairs, where he lies down with his feet upwards and his head downwards. He hits the garages, headbutts a wall, in a visible state of alteration. At a certain point, a car enters the courtyard, the driver gets out, and Fakir – according to the police report – attacks him: he shoves him, yells at him, and punches the car’s hood. That’s when the officers react, to protect the attacked man, they will say.
Among the issues being examined by investigators are the distance at which the pepper spray was deployed and the effects it had on the 42-year-old. “The intervention was carried out following protocol. There was no crushing with knees – explains lawyer Gabriele Bordoni, who assists the officers –, we need to understand if such an intervention could have been done better.” Those police officers “two young and sensitive guys, represented to me, through their eyes, the pain of that tragedy: the death of a man, something that leaves one distraught,” concludes Bordoni.
Fakir’s lawyer: “The autopsy should be on Friday”
For Fakir’s autopsy, “we have not received any notice, precisely because of the cumbersome nature of the system,” linked to the novelties on the model 45-bis file introduced by the security decree to deal with cases that provide a “shield” for those who act in the presence of a cause of justification. This was explained on In Onda on La7 by lawyer Fabio Anselmo, who defends the family members of the 42-year-old who died in Bologna during a police intervention. “We have received informal communication that it will be on Friday”, he added.
