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Who Abderrahim Fakir was: business owner, lawful immigrant, psychiatric patient

Abderrahim Fakir was 42. Born in Morocco, he came to Italy at the age of seven: he had lived there for thirty-five years.

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.