A single patrol car with two officers arrived in via Italo Svevo. The guidelines issued by the Department of Public Security on 11 May 2026 on handling uncooperative persons state that restraining someone who offers strong resistance requires complex techniques and four officers, with the support of a second patrol car or of the Carabinieri. They also state that, when an agitated person is reported, the patrol should inform the operations room and request that further units be sent.

Two officers therefore faced, with the help of private citizens, a situation that the protocol says should be handled by four trained officers.

This does not, on its own, prove criminal liability. But it shifts the question: not “the two officers used the wrong hold”, but “why were those two officers alone, and who was supposed to send the others”.

TO BE VERIFIED: it is not publicly known whether back-up was requested. That is the question to ask.

WHAT THE GUIDELINES SAY ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE PRESENT

In the section on de-escalation, the document explicitly lists, among the officer's actions, MOVING AWAY any other people who might heighten the subject's agitation. Under the protocol, civilians are to be kept at a distance. At the Pilastro, four of them took part in physically restraining him instead.

WHAT A PRIVATE CITIZEN MAY DO — THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK

A warning: this is a matter for criminal lawyers, and what follows sets out only the applicable provisions, not legal advice.

Article 383 of the Code of Criminal Procedure — POWER OF ARREST BY PRIVATE CITIZENS. A citizen may make an arrest in flagrante only for the offences listed in Article 380, that is the serious offences for which arrest is mandatory, and only where they are prosecutable ex officio. The citizen must then hand the arrested person over to the judicial police without delay: the Court of Cassation has made clear that they may not hold the person beyond the time strictly needed for the handover. Fakir's case does not fall within this scenario: no offence carrying mandatory arrest was in progress.

Article 52 of the Criminal Code — SELF-DEFENCE. The guidelines themselves make clear that, unlike the justification under Article 51 which is reserved to public officials, self-defence may be invoked by anyone, subject to the requirement of proportionality between the attack and the defence. It could plausibly cover the driver of the car at the moment he was shoved. It is far harder to see how it could cover someone who goes on holding down the ankles of a man already tied, once the attack has ceased.

Article 51 of the Criminal Code — EXERCISE OF A RIGHT OR PERFORMANCE OF A DUTY. The guidelines present it as reserved to police officers. In legal scholarship the second limb of the provision — the carrying out of a lawful order of a public authority — is also debated in relation to private citizens. This is the most delicate point in law, because according to some witness accounts it was the officers themselves who asked a member of the public for help.

Article 54 of the Criminal Code — NECESSITY. A third justification that could in the abstract be invoked.

Article 588 of the Criminal Code — AFFRAY. In fairness it must be said: what happened is NOT an affray in the technical sense, which requires at least three people fighting one another. The sources speak of a scuffle.

THE PROCEDURAL FACT: none of the four civilians is entered in the register under Article 45-bis. It contains only the two officers and the four Red Cross volunteers.

THE OPEN QUESTIONS

1. Was back-up requested? By whom, when, and with what answer from the operations room?
2. If an officer asks a passer-by to help restrain a person, is that passer-by covered by a justification?
3. And the officer who asks, having a protocol that requires him to move bystanders away, how does he answer for that choice?

SOURCES FOR THIS ENTRY (full links are on page 4)
— Guidelines of the Department of Public Security, 11 May 2026, reported by Sky TG24, Il Post, Today and BolognaToday on 20-21 July 2026.
— il Resto del Carlino, 22 July 2026, the officers' service report.
— il Resto del Carlino, 25 July 2026, the four civilians on the bodycam footage.
— The texts of the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure: Articles 51, 52, 54, 588 CC and 380, 383 CCP.

A note on the yardstick: “documented and uncontested” does not mean “established in court”. No trial has yet begun. It means that the fact appears in the record — service reports, official reconstructions by the local health authority, footage seized by the prosecutor's office, the text of the ministerial guidelines — and that none of the parties involved has denied it.

╔══ DOCUMENTED AND UNCONTESTED ══╗

— Abderrahim Fakir was a LAWFUL immigrant. His lawyer, who was assisting him with the renewal of his residence permit: “He was already perfectly in order”. The refusal of special protection had been suspended by the court. (source: Sky TG24, 21 July)

— He was a BUSINESS OWNER, running a haulage and cleaning company with employees, lawfully trading since at least 2012.

— He was a PSYCHIATRIC PATIENT UNDER THE CARE OF THE SERVICES, followed by a mental health centre since 20 June 2026, with a diagnosis, a confirmed course of treatment and a second appointment set for early August. (source: ANSA, 24 July)

— NO CRIME WAS IN PROGRESS at the time of the intervention. The patrol car does not arrive for a criminal police operation: it arrives because residents report a man in an altered state. Two minutes after arriving, it is the officers themselves who report to the ambulance service “a subject in psychiatric crisis”.

— THERE WERE TWO OFFICERS. A single patrol car, a 28-year-old patrol leader and a 23-year-old assistant. The guidelines of the Department of Public Security of 11 May 2026 state that restraining a subject who offers strong resistance requires COMPLEX TECHNIQUES AND FOUR OFFICERS, with the support of a second patrol car or of the Carabinieri. (source: Interior Ministry guidelines, reported by Sky TG24, Il Post, BolognaToday and Today on 20-21 July)

— CIVILIANS TOOK PART IN THE PHYSICAL RESTRAINT. Four Pilastro residents, at different moments and in different ways; the most visible is a Kosovar man who held Fakir's ankles down, continuing even when Fakir had stopped moving. According to some accounts gathered among residents, it was the officers themselves who asked a member of the public for help. Those same guidelines require instead, during de-escalation, that other people present who may heighten the subject's agitation be MOVED AWAY. (source: il Resto del Carlino, 25 July; Interior Ministry guidelines)

— FAKIR WAS HELD ON THE GROUND IN A PRONE POSITION. The guidelines require restraint on the ground in a SUPINE position, with IMMEDIATE ROTATION ONTO THE SIDE to safeguard breathing, and state that the prone position with compression of the chest must not be prolonged, because of the risks to the cardiac system and the respiratory organs.

— RESUSCITATION BEGAN WITH THE MAN STILL TIED at the wrists and ankles. This is apparent from the footage. The guidelines require restraints to be removed before medical procedures.

— THE AUTOPSY FOUND blood in the lungs and signs of crushing of the respiratory organs. (source: il Resto del Carlino and Sky TG24, 24 July)

╔══ UNDER INVESTIGATION ══╗

Bologna prosecutor's office, working hypothesis of manslaughter, six people entered in the preliminary register under Article 45-bis: the two officers and the four Red Cross volunteers. None is formally under investigation. The open questions are in the entry devoted to them.

THE QUESTION NOBODY HAS YET ASKED PUBLICLY: did the two officers request back-up? The guidelines state that a patrol faced with a person reported as agitated should inform the operations room and request that further units be sent. No public source shows whether this request was made, at what time, and with what outcome. It is the hole at the centre of this case.

A WORKING MAN. He owned a haulage and cleaning company operating in logistics, with employees. Not casual work: a company of his own, one that according to his lawyer “he worried about, and about his employees”.

RESIDENT IN THE BOLOGNA AREA. He lived in Borgonuovo, a village in the municipality of Sasso Marconi, province of Bologna. In recent months he had spent periods at the homes of friends and relatives in other parts of the city, including the Pilastro, where he had slept the night before. On the morning of 19 July he was in via Italo Svevo visiting relatives and friends.

A LAWFUL IMMIGRANT. His lawyer Barbara Spinelli, who was assisting him with his residence permit: “He was already perfectly in order, it was simply a matter of renewing the residence permit. He had lived lawfully in Italy since he was a child”. He had applied for special protection; the territorial commission had rejected the application, but the court had suspended the refusal, allowing him to remain. In his appeal he had relied on his ties to the country: lawful work since at least 2012, taxes paid, a company founded. According to his lawyer, in recent months he had developed “an unfounded fear of being sent away from Italy”, linked to the new European Pact on Migration, even though his papers were in order.

A PSYCHIATRIC PATIENT UNDER THE CARE OF THE SERVICES. On 20 June, a month before he died, the ambulance service treated him in a playground in Borgo Panigale: he had cut his left wrist. In the emergency department of the Maggiore hospital, doctors describe him as alert and oriented, low in mood but calm. It is he who asks to speak to a psychiatrist. In the following days he attends a mental health centre: a first diagnosis, a confirmed course of treatment, a second appointment set for the first days of August. He never got there. Eight days earlier, on 12 June, there had been a first episode at Castello d'Argile: he appears confused but cooperative and refuses to be taken to hospital.

ASTHMATIC. Friends and relatives say so. It is a fact the court-appointed experts will have to weigh.

According to those who knew him he was going through a difficult period: grief for his mother, debts, difficulties with the business, anxiety over the permit procedure. His friends: “He was a really good lad, he worked, he came from a good family” (Mohamed Bujana); “a polite young man, very quiet, a worker”, “he was not a violent person” (Antonietta Enacca, who had known him for 26 years).

THE PRIOR RECORD. Fakir had drug-related convictions: one for possession and dealing and, for repeated breaches of a residence requirement while under house arrest, a period in prison. The fact is public and must be reported. It must also be placed in context: nothing that happened on 19 July 2026 has any bearing on it. When his home was searched on 22 July, no narcotics were found. That day there was no criminal activity to stop: there was a man in psychiatric crisis in a garage courtyard.

MORNING — A resident, Parveen Akhtar, 72, tells La Stampa that she had already noticed Fakir between 9.30 and 10: first sitting under a tree, then on the steps down to the garages, finally lying on the ground. According to her he was asking for an ambulance and the police to be called. Another resident, Aly, tells Repubblica Bologna that he saw him banging his head against a wall and calling for help in Arabic.

11.59.26 — A passer-by calls the police emergency line: a man in a burgundy T-shirt, black trousers and flip-flops is striking the garage doors and shouting that someone wants to kill him. [police headquarters, via Sky TG24]

12.15 — ONE patrol car arrives from the Bolognina-Pontevecchio station: a 28-year-old patrol leader, a 23-year-old assistant driving, with a personal bodycam bought out of his own pocket. Fakir is barefoot and highly agitated. According to the service report he shouts “Help, the whole Pilastro wants to kill me”, gets up and throws himself back to the ground, strikes the garage doors, headbutts a wall. [il Resto del Carlino, 22 July]

12.17 — The officers call the ambulance service reporting “a subject in psychiatric crisis”. The operations room dispatches Red Cross ambulance Bologna65: a basic vehicle, with no doctor. The call is classified GREEN CODE, the lowest urgency. [health authority reconstruction, via Il Fatto Quotidiano]

12.17-12.36 — The officers keep their distance and attempt dialogue. This phase is documented by residents' footage broadcast by Tg La7 on 22 July.

12.30 — The ambulance arrives. The four volunteers stay at a distance. [health authority / Il Fatto]

12.36 — It is the Red Cross crew that contacts the operations room for a medical consultation and asks for the doctor-staffed rapid response car. [health authority / Il Fatto]

SHORTLY AFTERWARDS — A car enters the courtyard. See the entry on the scuffle.

THE RESTRAINT — Fakir is taken to the ground in a PRONE position. One of the officers gets on top of him to hold him still. Fakir bites the leg of the 23-year-old officer, who will be signed off for twelve days. After the bite the officer sprays pepper spray in his face while he is already on the ground. The handcuff key snaps: plastic cable ties are used on wrists and ankles. An officer holds his head against the asphalt. Four civilians take part in the restraint. Fakir shouts “Help”, “Stop”, says he cannot breathe and that they will kill him like this. The shouting fades until it stops.

AFTERWARDS — The officers get up. Fakir remains face down on the ground, wrists behind his back and ankles tied. From here the accounts diverge as to timing: see the points under investigation.

12.42 — The rapid response car Bologna101 leaves the Maggiore hospital. [health authority / Il Fatto]

RESUSCITATION — The volunteers turn Fakir onto his back, a police officer cuts his T-shirt. Two rescuers alternate chest compressions and manual ventilation; the semi-automatic defibrillator analyses the rhythm but does not advise a shock. In the first phase Fakir is STILL TIED. The procedures continue for about ten minutes.

12.53 — The rapid response car arrives. The doctor pronounces him dead. [health authority / Il Fatto, Sky TG24]

DURATION. From the emergency call to death: 53 and a half minutes. From the arrival of the patrol car: about 38 minutes. From the dispatch of the ambulance: 36 minutes.

THE SCENE. Shortly after 12.36, in the garage courtyard at number 6 of via Italo Svevo, there are Fakir, the two police officers, the four Red Cross volunteers who have stayed back, and some residents. A car drives in, heading for one of the garages.

WHAT THE OFFICERS' SERVICE REPORT SAYS. The driver gets out. Fakir attacks him: he shoves him, shouts at him and punches the bonnet of the car, “leaving a mark on it”. It is then that the officers step in to restrain him. [il Resto del Carlino, 22 July]

THE DAMAGE TO THE CAR. One punch, one mark on the bonnet. That is what appears in the service report. Some later accounts also mention the windscreen. There is NO public record of any complaint or criminal complaint for criminal damage, and the damage to the car does not feature among the elements of the investigation. What the report treats as the trigger is not damage to the vehicle: it is the assault on a person.

A DISCREPANCY THAT MUST BE KEPT IN VIEW. Sources differ on how many people got out of the car. According to the officers' report it is THE DRIVER, one person. According to accounts based on the bodycam footage broadcast by Tg1 on 23 July, TWO MEN get out, driver and passenger, both caught up in the scuffle. This is not a detail: it changes whether the officers were protecting someone under attack or separating several people fighting each other.

WHAT THE BODYCAM SHOWS. The hands of the two officers grip the arms of a man in a white T-shirt to separate him from another in a red one. The detail is not secondary: the officers grip THE OTHER MAN TOO, not only Fakir. That indicates that at the critical moment the occupant of the car was physically engaged. The bodycam is switched on moments before the intervention and then records everything: the restraint, the arrival of the emergency services, the resuscitation. The video has been handed to the prosecutor's office.

WHO THE TWO MEN FROM THE CAR ARE. This has not been made public, nor is their position in the proceedings known. No source states that they struck Fakir or obstructed the operation: to attribute that to them would be supposition.

THE CIVILIANS WHO HELD FAKIR DOWN. Four Pilastro residents, at different moments and in different ways. The most visible is a Kosovar man, bare-chested, who held the ankles down for the longest time, continuing even when Fakir had stopped moving and assisting the officers as they tied his feet. According to accounts gathered among residents, it was the officers who asked a member of the public to help them. At least one of the four has already been questioned by prosecutors; the Kosovar man, as of 30 July, had not. It has NOT been disclosed whether the two men from the car are among these four.

THE TWO READINGS. For Gabriele Bordoni, the officers' lawyer: “There is a moment of contact with other people who were near a car and who come into contact with him: at that point it is clear that the officers have to intervene”. For Fabio Anselmo, the family's lawyer: the earlier footage shows that Fakir was still able to hold a conversation and that before being taken down he had no visible injuries to his head or face; the publicly released bodycam extracts do not make it possible to establish how serious the scuffle was, or whether the intervention was proportionate.

WHAT REMAINS TO BE ESTABLISHED. The full bodycam recording has not been made public: only extracts have circulated. Until it has been examined in full and cross-checked against the other footage, it is not possible to say how long the scuffle lasted, who did what, and whether the force used after the takedown was proportionate.

A note on the term: TSO stands for trattamento sanitario obbligatorio, the Italian compulsory psychiatric treatment order. It is not a police measure but a health measure, and it follows a precisely defined procedure, set out further down.

╔══ THE PATH THROUGH THE SERVICES ══╗

12 JUNE 2026 — CASTELLO D'ARGILE. The first known episode. According to the account of the mayor, Alessandro Erriquez, Fakir had been trying to reach a friend in Cento and got off the bus several kilometres early. He wanders through the town, enters the courtyard of a block of flats near via Guido Rossa, rings a doorbell chosen at random. Some residents call for help. The Carabinieri arrive, along with an ambulance and the mayor himself, who talks with him at length. Fakir appears confused but NOT aggressive, and cooperates with those trying to help him. The crew offer him medical assistance: he refuses to be taken to hospital.

20 JUNE 2026 — BORGO PANIGALE. In the early afternoon the ambulance service treats him in a playground: he has cut his left wrist. In the emergency department of the Maggiore hospital, doctors describe him as alert and oriented, low in mood but calm. IT IS FAKIR HIMSELF WHO ASKS to speak to a psychiatrist.

THE FOLLOWING DAYS — THE MENTAL HEALTH CENTRE. He attends a mental health centre. The doctors make a first diagnosis, confirm a course of treatment and set a second appointment for the first days of August.

19 JULY 2026. He dies in via Italo Svevo. He will never make the August appointment.

In little more than a month, then, Fakir had crossed paths with the public system three times: the Carabinieri and the ambulance service at Castello d'Argile, the emergency department in Bologna, the mental health centre. He had asked for help himself, explicitly. The fourth encounter with the State was the one on 19 July.

╔══ THE ORDER REQUESTED ON THE EMERGENCY LINE AND NEVER ACTIVATED ══╗

According to two witnesses interviewed by BolognaToday, while Fakir was in crisis in via Svevo — hallucinating, injuring himself by striking the asphalt and the garage shutters — a woman who identified herself as a healthcare worker expressly asked the emergency operations room to start the procedure for a compulsory treatment order.

The order was never started.

It is one of the points being examined by investigators, together with the manner of the restraint and the adequacy of the medical response. A compulsory treatment order is issued by decree of the mayor on the reasoned proposal of a doctor, and confirmed by the guardianship judge: it is not something an emergency operations room can activate on its own, but it is the channel through which the request should have been routed to those who could order it.

╔══ THE MEDICAL PROTOCOLS ══╗

For psychiatric emergencies the rule is that the patient must never be left in a prone position, but placed on their side or on their back. The four Red Cross volunteers sent to via Svevo were a basic life support crew: no doctor, no nurse. Trained in resuscitation and in the use of a defibrillator, but without the means to carry out an advanced clinical assessment or to administer drugs to sedate Fakir and shorten the officers' physical restraint.

On 1 August 2026 the Bologna local health authority announced that it would rewrite the ambulance service protocols on handling people in an altered state, setting out when a doctor should be sent. This came after Fakir's death, but it says something about what was not working before.

╔══ WHICH MENTAL HEALTH CENTRE WAS TREATING HIM? ══╗

It is not known. And it is a question that cannot simply be put to anyone.

THE CRITERION. In Italy psychiatric care follows a territorial criterion: the patient is assigned to the mental health centre responsible for the area where they live. Fakir lived in Borgonuovo, a village in the municipality of Sasso Marconi, which falls within the Reno, Lavino and Samoggia district of the Bologna health authority: the corresponding mental health centre is in Casalecchio di Reno, at via Cimarosa 5/2.

THIS IS AN INFERENCE, NOT A VERIFIED FACT. And there are elements that complicate it. On 20 June Fakir was treated in Borgo Panigale and taken to the emergency department of the Maggiore hospital, which is in the city of Bologna: the referral to a mental health centre may have been to the district where he lived or to the one covering the hospital. Moreover, in the preceding months he often slept at the homes of friends and relatives in other parts of the city, including the Pilastro.

WHY THE POINT MATTERS. If a person is registered as living in one municipality but in fact lives elsewhere, territorial care assignment is precisely the point at which continuity of treatment can break down: an appointment set thirty kilometres from where you sleep is an appointment that is easier to miss. The question is not bureaucratic; it concerns whether that course of treatment was practicable at all.

╔══ WHY A JOURNALIST CANNOT SIMPLY ASK THE HEALTH AUTHORITY ══╗

This information cannot be obtained by journalistic means, and not because the health authority is being evasive: it is forbidden by law.

Health data are “special categories of personal data” under Article 9 of European Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) and enjoy reinforced protection. A health authority may neither confirm nor deny that an identified person was in the care of one of its services: the confirmation itself would be a disclosure of health data. The prohibition does not lapse on the death of the person concerned — Article 2-terdecies of the Italian Privacy Code (legislative decree 196/2003) provides that rights over the data of the deceased may be exercised by those who have an interest of their own or who act to protect the person concerned, that is, in substance, by family members, not by third parties.

To this are added the professional secrecy of healthcare staff, backed by criminal penalties under Article 622 of the Criminal Code, and official secrecy. On the journalist's side, the deontological rules on the processing of personal data in the exercise of journalism, annexed to the Privacy Code, apply: on health data they impose a requirement that the information be essential and that the dignity of the person be respected.

PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCE. The fact can emerge in only two ways: through the family and their lawyer, who may request the medical records as holders of an interest of their own; or through the judicial authority, which may obtain the clinical file as part of the investigation. Not through a journalist's request to the health authority.

This archive therefore flags the question, and also flags that the question has, as things stand, no legitimate channel for a public answer. It is a limit of knowledge, not evasiveness to be denounced.

╔══ THE CONSTITUTION ══╗

ARTICLE 32. The Republic protects health as a fundamental right of the individual and an interest of the community. “No one may be obliged to undergo a particular health treatment except under the provisions of the law. The law may not under any circumstances violate the limits imposed by respect for the human person.” From this flows the right to self-determination in treatment, and therefore also the right to refuse care: which is exactly what Fakir exercised on 12 June at Castello d'Argile, refusing to be taken to hospital.

ARTICLE 13. Personal liberty is inviolable. The fourth paragraph is the most pertinent here: “Any act of physical or moral violence against persons subjected in any way to restrictions of liberty shall be punished.” It applies to anyone deprived of liberty, not only to prisoners: therefore also to a person handcuffed or bound with cable ties in a courtyard.

╔══ THE BASAGLIA LAW ══╗

Law no. 180 of 13 May 1978, later incorporated into Articles 33, 34 and 35 of Law 833/1978 establishing the National Health Service.

Italy was the first country in the world to legislate for the closure of its asylums. The principle it introduces is not organisational but concerns the status of the person: the psychiatric patient ceases to be regarded as someone “dangerous to himself and others” to be kept in custody, and becomes a holder of rights, whose CONSENT TO TREATMENT MUST BE SOUGHT IN EVERY SITUATION. Compulsory treatment becomes the exception, not the rule, and only within a procedure hedged with safeguards.

THE PROCEDURE. Reasoned proposal by a doctor, confirmed by a second doctor from a public facility. Decree of the mayor. Notification to the guardianship judge within forty-eight hours of admission. The guardianship judge, within the following forty-eight hours, having gathered information and ordered any necessary checks, confirms or declines to confirm by reasoned decision. Duration seven days, renewable. Compulsory treatment takes place “with respect for the dignity of the person and for civil and political rights”, and those subjected to it retain the right to communicate with whomever they see fit.

It is therefore not something an emergency operations room can order on its own: it is the channel through which a request must be routed to those who have the power to order it.

╔══ CONSTITUTIONAL COURT, JUDGMENT no. 76 OF 30 MAY 2025 ══╗

A year before Fakir's death the Constitutional Court declared Article 35 of Law 833/1978 unconstitutional in so far as it failed to guarantee that a person subjected to compulsory treatment be informed and heard. The new safeguards: the mayor's decision must be communicated to the person concerned or to their legal representative before notification, and the guardianship judge must hear the patient before confirming it.

This shows the direction in which the legal system was moving: towards more safeguards for the person in crisis, not fewer.

╔══ THE COURT OF CASSATION: RESTRAINT IS NOT A THERAPEUTIC ACT ══╗

Court of Cassation, criminal division V, judgment no. 50497 of 20 June 2018, known as the Mastrogiovanni judgment.

Franco Mastrogiovanni, a 58-year-old primary school teacher, died tied hand and foot to a bed on 31 July 2009 in the psychiatric ward of the Vallo della Lucania hospital, where he had been admitted under a compulsory treatment order less than ninety hours earlier. The restraint was recorded by the ward's cameras.

The principles laid down by the Court:

— Mechanical restraint IS NEVER A THERAPEUTIC ACT. It is an instrument restricting personal liberty which has no curative purpose and produces no improvement in the state of health.
— It is lawful only where there is a concrete situation of evident and present danger of serious harm to the patient, to be assessed by strict criteria and case by case.
— Outside that scenario, restraint amounts to the offence of FALSE IMPRISONMENT.

The European Court of Human Rights has moreover condemned Italy for a violation of Article 3 of the Convention — the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment — in a case of mechanical restraint in a healthcare setting. It is a separate condemnation from the one in the Magherini case set out below: it concerns a different Article of the Convention and a hospital, not a police, context.

A necessary caveat: this case law concerns medical restraint in a hospital setting, not restraint applied by police forces in a public street, which is governed by other rules. It is set out here because it defines the general principle by which the Italian legal system regards the bound body of a person in psychiatric crisis.

╔══ THE PRECEDENT THAT KEEPS RETURNING, AND THE CONDEMNATION SIX MONTHS EARLIER ══╗

Riccardo Magherini, 39, died in Florence on 3 March 2014 after being held face down on the ground by three Carabinieri. It is the case to which Abderrahim Fakir's death is most often compared: both concern the same question, namely what happens to a person in an altered state held face down on the asphalt.

On 15 January 2026 that case reached the European Court of Human Rights, which in its judgment Magherini and Others v. Italy (application no. 32707/19) condemned the Italian State for A DOUBLE VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 2 of the Convention, the right to life.

ON THE SUBSTANTIVE LIMB. The initial restraint may have been necessary, but it was not shown to be absolutely necessary to keep Riccardo Magherini handcuffed in a prone position for about twenty minutes, even after he had stopped moving and speaking and had become apparently unresponsive. The Court further found that the guidelines then in force provided for handcuffing on the ground in a prone position WITH NO REFERENCE WHATEVER to the risks of prolonged maintenance in that position, and that officers had been given no specific training on those risks.

ON THE PROCEDURAL LIMB. The investigation failed to meet the requirement of independence, because the statements of key eyewitnesses were taken, in the immediate aftermath, by the very officers involved in the operation.

FOUR MONTHS AFTER THAT JUDGMENT the Department of Public Security issued the guidelines of 11 May 2026. The chronological sequence is a fact; the causal link is plausible but appears in no source, and is flagged here as a hypothesis.

TWO POINTS OF THAT JUDGMENT BEAR ON THIS CASE. First: the assessment concerns not only the initial lawfulness of the use of force, but also its DURATION, its modulation, MEDICAL MONITORING and the officers' ability to recognise clinical deterioration in time. Second: the request by the Fakir family's lawyer that the investigation not be carried out by the police rests precisely on the procedural limb of this condemnation.

╔══ THE SHORTFALL IN SERVICES ══╗

Context data, relating to the national system and not to the individual case.

— About 3 per cent of the National Health Fund is allocated to mental health; some more recent estimates put it between 2.6 and 2.7 per cent. France invests about 10 per cent, Germany about 12.
— More than a million people are in treatment with community psychiatric services for anxiety, depression, behavioural or eating disorders: the highest number ever recorded.
— The Italian Society of Psychiatry has for years been warning of a structural shortage of staff. A recent study estimates that an increase of at least 1.9 billion euro over three years and a 47 per cent increase in dedicated staff would be needed.
— Regional inequalities are marked. Emilia-Romagna is among the regions with the highest coverage, about 235 patients treated per ten thousand inhabitants, above the national average; Marche, Abruzzo, Molise and Calabria are appreciably below it.

This last figure must be read honestly, because it cuts both ways: the region in which Fakir died is among those that invest most in mental health. Which shifts the question from how much to how — to continuity of care, to emergency protocols, to the joining-up of the ambulance service, the police and community services.

1. BACK-UP. It is not publicly known whether the two officers requested the support of a second patrol car, as the guidelines provide. It is the most important unanswered question.

2. THE MINUTES BETWEEN THE RESTRAINT AND THE ALARM. According to the reconstruction from the bodycam (il Resto del Carlino): about four minutes between the moment the officers get up and the words “He isn't breathing”, “His eyes are fixed”. According to the Red Cross: the volunteers approached less than a minute later, still finding vital signs, and began resuscitation after a few tens of seconds. The two versions are incompatible. The full footage and the memory of the defibrillator, seized by the prosecutor's office, will decide.

3. WHY THE RESCUERS STAYED BACK. It remains to be established who declared the restraint phase over and safe, and when: from that moment responsibility for Abderrahim Fakir's body passes from the officers to the medical staff. The Red Cross's position, the limits of a crew with no doctor and the legal framework concerning the four volunteers are in the entry devoted to them.

4. RESUSCITATION ON A BOUND PERSON. Documented by the footage. For the family's lawyer this is “intolerable” and the responsibility would lie with the officers, not the medical staff. It must be established who was supposed to remove the cable ties and why it was not done.

5. THE ORIGIN OF THE BLOOD. Footage from 25 July, filmed during the forensic examination, shows Fakir on his back with blood on his face and a patch beneath the nape of his neck. According to the officers' lawyer it came from an injury caused by scraping along the ground during the restraint; the service report states that he had head injuries sustained BEFORE the scuffle. According to the family's lawyer, the footage from before the takedown shows no visible injuries.

6. THE SPRAY. The distance from which it was sprayed and its effects remain to be established. The autopsy found slight irritation of the airways consistent with inhalation, without it being known whether this contributed to the death.

7. THE CAUSE OF DEATH. First findings on 24 July: blood in the lungs and signs of crushing of the respiratory organs. The most plausible hypothesis is a respiratory crisis culminating in asphyxia, but it has not been established what caused it, nor whether the crushing occurred during the restraint, during the resuscitation or in both phases. No major fractures, apart from a slight one to a toe. A preliminary test reportedly found cocaine: the definitive toxicology analyses will have to confirm this and establish whether it played a role. The final report is expected within ninety days. The experts appointed by the prosecutor's office, all from outside the Bologna hospital: Valentina Bugelli (forensic pathologist, Parma), Cristina Basso (pathologist, Padua), Manuela Bonizzoli (anaesthetist and intensivist, Careggi), Luca Morini (toxicologist, Pavia).

8. THE RESTRAINT TECHNIQUE. Under examination is whether it complied with the Interior Ministry guidelines. The officers' lawyer: “The restraining intervention was carried out following the protocol. There was no crushing with the knees.”

9. THE JUDICIAL PICTURE. Bologna prosecutor's office, manslaughter. The file is with prosecutors Domenico Ambrosino and Francesca Arienti, coordinated by chief prosecutor Paolo Guido. The names of the two officers and the four volunteers are in the preliminary register under Article 45-bis by virtue of the provision known as the “penal shield” — Law no. 54 of 24 April 2026, which introduced Article 335-quinquies of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It is not an immunity: it does not prevent investigation nor erase any offences. The family's lawyer has asked that the investigation not be carried out by the police, citing the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

10. OTHER MINOR OPEN POINTS. The registered and operating offices of Fakir's company. Which mental health centre was treating him. His family situation: some sources report a wife who intervened by telephone from Morocco, others a separation from an Italian wife. The identity and position of the two men from the car.

╔══ THEY ARE NOT UNDER INVESTIGATION ══╗

The six are ENTERED IN THE PRELIMINARY REGISTER UNDER ARTICLE 45-bis, not in the register of persons under investigation: this is the effect of the provision known as the penal shield, Law no. 54 of 24 April 2026, Article 335-quinquies of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It is not an immunity and it does not stop the investigation. But someone subject to preliminary checks is not under investigation: to write “the four rescuers under investigation” means, as things stand, writing something false about people identifiable in their own neighbourhood.

╔══ WHAT THEY DID NOT DECIDE ══╗

The GREEN CODE, the lowest level of urgency, was assigned by the operations room. So was the dispatch of a BASIC AMBULANCE with no doctor and no nurse in response to a report of “a subject in psychiatric crisis”.

What they did do was the opposite: at 12.36 it was the volunteers who called the operations room for a medical consultation and asked for the doctor-staffed car — before the scuffle. They raised the alarm on their own initiative, judging that the situation exceeded their competence. The doctor-staffed car left at 12.42 and arrived at 12.53.

A basic life support crew can recognise cardiac arrest, perform compressions, ventilate and use a defibrillator. It cannot carry out an advanced clinical assessment or administer drugs: they could not sedate Abderrahim Fakir and shorten the officers' physical restraint that way. In criminal law, lack of skill is measured against the level of competence a person is required to have, not against a doctor's.

Neither the ages nor the identities of the four have been made public, and this archive does not attribute any. What can be said concerns the system: pre-hospital emergency care in Italy rests largely on volunteer, unpaid personnel.

╔══ THE SAFE SCENE ══╗

The first principle of rescue: you do not enter a scene that is not safe. It is not personal caution, it is an operating rule. The Red Cross: “They were there, waiting to be able to intervene. It is unthinkable that they could have done so on a subject who at that moment was in the hands of the police.”

The principle is not in dispute. What must be established is how it applied to those minutes: WHO declared the restraint phase over and safe, and WHEN. From that moment responsibility for Abderrahim Fakir's body passes from the officers to the medical staff.

╔══ WHAT WOULD HAVE TO BE PROVED ══╗

The prosecutor's working hypothesis is manslaughter, Article 589 of the Criminal Code, punishable by six months to five years. Three things are needed.

A POSITION OF GUARANTEE. Whoever takes charge of a patient has a duty to protect them, and failing to prevent an outcome amounts to causing it (Article 40, second paragraph, of the Criminal Code). But if the scene was under the exclusive control of the police, for those minutes the duty was not yet theirs.

FAULT. The protocol for psychiatric emergencies forbids leaving the patient prone: they must be placed on their side or on their back.

CAUSATION, and this is where everything is decided. With an omission it is not enough to prove that they waited: it must be proved that the omitted duty, had it been performed, WOULD HAVE PREVENTED THE OUTCOME WITH A HIGH DEGREE OF RATIONAL CREDIBILITY. That is the test laid down by the Joint Divisions of the Court of Cassation in the Franzese judgment, no. 30328 of 2002. Neither statistical probability nor an increase in risk will do: it would have to be proved that by approaching at 12.40 instead of 12.44, Abderrahim Fakir would be alive.

A QUESTION FOR A CRIMINAL LAWYER: the shield against liability for lack of skill introduced by the Gelli-Bianco law, Article 590-sexies of the Criminal Code, applies to “those practising the health professions”. A volunteer not enrolled in a professional register probably does not qualify, and would therefore be more exposed than a nurse in the same position.

╔══ HOW MUCH TIME ABDERRAHIM FAKIR REALLY HAD ══╗

“After four minutes the damage is irreversible”, “every minute costs ten per cent of survival”: figures that are true in one precise context and misleading outside it.

They come from the model of Larsen and others, Annals of Emergency Medicine, November 1993. The real decline without treatment is 5.5 per cent per minute, not ten. And the study is built on 1,667 patients in VENTRICULAR FIBRILLATION: a primary cardiac arrest, blood still oxygenated, a shockable rhythm. That is not this case. Italy's National Institute of Health, indeed, gives no figure at all: it says “a few minutes”.

WHY THE CLOCK STARTS EARLIER HERE. In an asphyxial arrest oxygen falls BEFORE the heart stops, and the damage accumulates during the hypoxia, not after it. Four factors were acting on Abderrahim Fakir at once:

— THE PRONE POSITION with compression of the chest, which reduces ventilation and pulmonary perfusion;
— THE STRUGGLE, which produces metabolic acidosis and burns through reserves;
— THE PEPPER SPRAY, sprayed in his face when he was already on the ground: the autopsy found irritation of the airways consistent with inhalation;
— COCAINE, which a preliminary test is said to have detected and which the definitive analyses must confirm: if confirmed, it increases oxygen consumption and acid production.

To these must be added his psychiatric crisis, which fuelled the agitation and therefore the exertion.

The review published by the Italian Society of Legal and Insurance Medicine on 27 July 2026 describes exactly this synergy: collapse follows from severe acidaemia and depressed cardiac contractility, “often in pulseless electrical activity, even without an initial phase of evident and marked desaturation”. In via Svevo the defibrillator analysed the rhythm and DID NOT ADVISE A SHOCK: a non-shockable rhythm, the category with the worst prognosis, the one in which a shock is useless and only removing the cause counts.

COCAINE DOES NOT MAKE THE RESTRAINT LIGHTER: IT MAKES IT WORSE. It is the combination of stimulants and the prone position that constitutes the high-risk scenario — in a Swedish national series of 52 deaths during restraint, the prone position occurs in 90 per cent of cases and substances in 69. The same review warns that the presence of cocaine “does not allow the death to be automatically classified as natural or due to substance use”, and devotes a chapter to asking whether “excited delirium” is not a forensic myth used to justify the use of force.

CONSEQUENCE. The clock does not start when the volunteers approach: it had already started. “How many minutes did the rescuers wait” is the wrong question. And it cuts both ways: it lightens the position of the four volunteers and increases the weight of the earlier phase, which does not concern them.

A WARNING THAT APPLIES TO EVERYONE PRESENT. The same source notes that the ability to speak does not prove that ventilation is adequate, and that “a sudden cessation of resistance must not be automatically interpreted as calm having been achieved, but as a possible sign of respiratory exhaustion or sudden collapse”. Abderrahim Fakir had said he could not breathe. Then the shouting faded until it stopped.

╔══ AND IF A DOCTOR HAD COME AT ONCE? ══╗

This is the question on which the case against the rescuers rests, and it is worth putting in full: suppose the doctor from the rapid response car had been in the courtyard from the first minute.

WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN ADDED. Not the defibrillator shock: that had already been ruled out by the device itself, because the rhythm was not shockable. What would have been added is drugs, advanced airway management and the possibility of sedating Abderrahim Fakir earlier. These are things that count WHILE the compression is going on, far less afterwards.

WHAT THE NUMBERS SAY. Survival after a cardiac arrest outside hospital is around ten per cent, and fewer than ten per cent of all such patients are discharged with good neurological function. For non-shockable rhythms of asphyxial origin those numbers fall further.

SO. To the question “would a doctor have been enough”, the honest answer is: at that point, in all probability no. Even on the best hypothesis, an outcome without brain damage was unlikely, because hypoxic damage accumulates during the compression and not from the moment someone bends down to help. The doctor was needed EARLIER. And the volunteers had in fact asked for one at 12.36, before the scuffle.

A NOTE ON METHOD. This archive does not write that Abderrahim Fakir would have suffered brain damage anyway: that cannot be demonstrated, and no expert will ever put it in those terms. It writes that an intact outcome was unlikely — which in criminal proceedings is precisely the point that matters. Because if a favourable outcome was unlikely even with the best possible care, proving that the rescuers' delay caused the death WITH A HIGH DEGREE OF RATIONAL CREDIBILITY, the standard required by the Court of Cassation, becomes almost impossible.

╔══ THE DUTY TO MONITOR ══╗

The European Court of Human Rights judgment in the Magherini case, of 15 January 2026, is set out in full in the entry on the legal framework. Only one point matters here, and it concerns the rescuers indirectly: the Court holds that when a person is held on the ground, what weighs is not only the initial lawfulness of the force, but also its duration, MEDICAL MONITORING and the ability to recognise clinical deterioration in time. Who was supposed to watch Abderrahim Fakir's breathing while he lay prone and bound is a question that, for the Court, falls within the obligation to protect life.

╔══ WHAT REMAINS TO BE ESTABLISHED ══╗

1. Who declared the restraint phase over and safe, and when.
2. Whether the volunteers approached after four minutes or after less than one: the memory of the defibrillator, seized by the prosecutor's office, will tell.
3. Whether a faster intervention would have prevented the death with a high degree of rational credibility. It is the only question that counts in criminal terms, and the answer is expected in the experts' report within ninety days of the autopsy.
4. Whether the definitive toxicology analyses confirm the cocaine and what role they attribute to it.
5. Whether Article 590-sexies of the Criminal Code covers a volunteer rescuer.

Until then the four remain what they were that day: people who had gone out unpaid to help someone, and who ended up inside something bigger than themselves.

SOURCES FOR THIS ENTRY (full links on page 4)
— The prosecutor's note on the 45-bis register: il Resto del Carlino, 23 July 2026. The penal shield: Sky TG24.
— Official health authority timeline and the Red Cross statement: Il Fatto Quotidiano, 20 July 2026.
— The four minutes from the bodycam: il Resto del Carlino, 26 July 2026.
— Ambulance service protocols for psychiatric emergencies: Il Fatto Quotidiano, 23 July 2026.
— Pathophysiology of restraint: Italian Society of Legal and Insurance Medicine, 27 July 2026.
— Survival model: Larsen, Eisenberg, Cummins, Hallstrom, Annals of Emergency Medicine, 1993. ERC 2021-2025 guidelines, Italian Resuscitation Council. MSD Manuals, professional edition. National Institute of Health, ISSalute.
— European Court of Human Rights, Magherini and Others v. Italy, application no. 32707/19, 15 January 2026.
— Provisions cited: Articles 40, 113, 589 and 590-sexies of the Criminal Code; Court of Cassation, Joint Divisions, Franzese judgment no. 30328 of 2002.

THE REQUEST FOR A DOCTOR — THE CRUX

The officers' version. The service report and their lawyer maintain that the officers, when calling the ambulance service, also asked for a doctor-staffed rapid response car for a person “in psychotic crisis”. According to their lawyer the request was made twice.

The Bologna health authority's version. The recordings of the calls and the documentation held by the ambulance service operations room DO NOT confirm this account. The health authority has stated that there is no record of any request for a doctor.

An intermediate hypothesis in circulation. The request may have been made by the officers to their own police operations room, and may then not have been passed on to the ambulance service in those terms.

THE FACTS, which nobody disputes. The call was classified as a green code, the lowest urgency. A basic ambulance was sent with four Red Cross volunteers, with no doctor and no nurse. The doctor-staffed car was requested only at 12.36, by the Red Cross crew, and arrived at 12.53, when the doctor could do no more than pronounce him dead.

THE PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE has obtained the telephone call in order to establish what was actually asked for and whether the initial medical response was adequate to the crisis reported. Investigators will also examine “how the emergency was communicated and why, upstream, it was decided not to send a team with a doctor or a nurse”.

WHAT REMAINS TO BE ESTABLISHED. Whether a request for a doctor was made and to whom; whether it was passed on to the ambulance service operations room and in what terms; on what information the green code was assigned; and whether the medical response sent was adequate to the situation reported. These inquiries are under way at the Bologna prosecutor's office. Neither version has been verified to date.

CRITERION. Documented facts are kept separate from the points under investigation, and those from the buck-passing between institutions, which comes last. Where there are competing versions, both are given, with an indication of who maintains them. Where there is no corroboration, it is stated that there is none. Inferences are flagged as such.

“DOCUMENTED AND UNCONTESTED” does not mean “established in court”: no trial has begun. It means that the fact appears in the record — service reports, official reconstructions by the health authority, footage seized by the prosecutor's office, the text of the ministerial guidelines — and that none of the parties has denied it.

SOURCES. The times come from the Bologna police headquarters and from the official reconstruction by the local health authority, published on 20 and 21 July 2026 by Il Fatto Quotidiano and Sky TG24. Residents' accounts come from La Stampa, la Repubblica Bologna, Il Fatto Quotidiano and BolognaToday. The officers' service report comes from il Resto del Carlino of 22 July. The bodycam images were broadcast by Tg1 on 23 July. The content of the guidelines of the Department of Public Security of 11 May 2026 comes from Sky TG24, Il Post, Today and BolognaToday. Where a story was picked up from a summary, I traced the chain back and cited the original source.

LIMITS. It has not been possible to verify the content of the linked videos one by one: some titles may not match, some footage may have been taken down. Some articles require a subscription. The dates beside the entries in the lists are reconstructed from the event described and may be a day out.

WARNING. Some videos show the last minutes of a person's life.

SAFEGUARDS. None of the six people involved is formally under investigation. Being the subject of preliminary checks is not the same as being under investigation, being under investigation is not the same as being charged, and being charged is not the same as being convicted. This archive gathers public sources and makes no accusations.

Closed as of 3 August 2026.