A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #472 - The tip of the iceberg (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The facts are well known: on July 19, 2026, Abderrahim Fakir, 42, was 
killed by police in Bologna. He had lived in Italy since he was seven 
years old and owned a transport and porterage company. The killing is 
clear from the videos, the truth before our eyes: tied up by police with 
the help of helpful citizens, crushed and suffocated to death in front 
of numerous witnesses and the 118 emergency services who stood by, 
immobile, frightened to intervene or perhaps complicit themselves.

The case is typical , in the sense that it is one among countless others 
that are more or less similar. It emerged, unlike many others that 
remained hidden, thanks to the videos and the outrage that brought a 
segment of the city to the streets both that day and in subsequent days, 
and which also manifested itself in some scuffles, usually labeled by 
the mainstream media as "urban guerrilla warfare," but which were a 
minimal symbolic sign of the anger that is shaking our souls.

This is because no one feels safe here. Four days after the Fakir case, 
25-year-old Mohamed Amin Bessioud died in Cosenza after falling from the 
balcony of his third-floor apartment, handcuffed, during a Carabinieri 
search. The Bologna murder occurred exactly 25 years after the killing 
of Carlo Giuliani in Genoa, the indelible torture and humiliation of 
those days, which in turn were preceded by the dress rehearsal for 
repression at the Global Forum in Naples a few months earlier. The 
center-left is leading the way, and the right is continuing its work, 
even in this area.

Twenty-five years of repeated murders on the streets, in prisons, in 
CPRs, in police stations, and in barracks. Too many names: Federico 
Aldrovandi, Stefano Cucchi, Giuseppe Uva, Aldo Bianzino, Massimo 
Casalnuovo, Michele Ferrulli, Dino Budroni, Franco Mastrogiovanni, 
Andrea Soldi, Riccardo Rassman, etc. The anti-psychiatric collective 
Artaud of Pisa, in a statement a month after the events, recalled 
further murders caused by so-called "containment." Riccardo Magherini 
died crushed to the ground in Florence in 2014, suffocated by the 
Carabinieri while calling for help, just like Fakir; Luigi Marinelli, 
crushed by a knee on his back during a police intervention at his home 
in Rome on September 5, 2011; Giacomo Zotti, who died in Urago d'Oglio 
in the province of Brescia during a compulsory medical treatment and was 
apprehended by the Carabinieri on October 26, 2011; Vincenzo Sapia, 
suffocated on the ground by a Carabinieri officer in Mirto Crosio, in 
the province of Cosenza, on May 24, 2014; Andrea Soldi, immobilized 
during a compulsory medical treatment by three local police officers and 
a psychiatrist in Turin on August 5, 2015; Arafet Arfaoui, died in 
Empoli on January 17, 2019, after being handcuffed and pinned to the 
ground by the Carabinieri; Igor Squeo, died at age 33 between June 11 
and 12, 2022, in Milan, following a police and paramedic intervention in 
his apartment; MM, suffocated at age 39 inside a church in Vigevano 
after being handcuffed and pinned to two local police officers on 
November 3, 2023.

But the abuse of power of the uniformed is even more prevalent in the 
many places of detention. Over 5,500 people have died in prison since 
1992, approximately 2,000 by suicide and approximately 3,500 by illness, 
overdose, homicide, or causes "to be ascertained." In the Sant'Anna 
prison in Modena, the riot that broke out there in March 2020, as in 
other Italian institutions, resulted in nine deaths, attributed to drug 
overdoses but whose true causes were clearly different. In recent years, 
dozens of people held in administrative detention (i.e., without 
criminal convictions) have died in deprivation and without medical care. 
To date, there are no official data or transparent and efficient 
reporting systems to count the deaths in these places.

Fakir's killing is therefore the tip of the iceberg of a consolidated 
and widespread practice, which goes hand in hand with misdirections and 
cover-ups. All these murders are in fact accompanied and followed by 
constant attempts to conceal the truth, in full continuity with the 
long-standing strategy practiced by the secret services during the 
Piazza Fontana massacres of 1969 and the early 1990s. Fakir was 
immediately vilified in an evidently racist manner by the police unions 
and the press, while the two police officers filmed in the video, 
protected like the paramedics by the newly created "criminal shield" and 
promptly returned to duty, were not even named (let alone the numbers on 
their uniforms!), while the family's lawyer immediately denounced 
ongoing maneuvers, above all the fact that the investigation is being 
conducted by the same institution responsible for the murder.

In this context of widespread armed state violence perpetrated by new 
and old masters who no longer have qualms about invoking fascism, I 
believe that for those who neither wish to submit to nor accept this 
society, there are three things to do. Stand up for those in need, those 
expressing suffering and pain, self-managing help, care, listening, and 
support networks, practically rejecting and helping others reject the 
intervention of the police, gradually dismantling the consolidated 
imagery that delegates one's life to the institutions of domination. Be 
aware of the need to practice self-defense in a context of growing 
state-sponsored criminal violence, overturning the propagandistic 
discourse on so-called "security," clarifying that the police cause 
insecurity and constant danger. Raise the voice of the need to repeal 
the security decrees. Constantly raise the anarchist discourse, and 
therefore the need to dismantle the coercive forms of power, a position 
now taken by social movements developing abolitionist perspectives.

"But someone will object, who will then protect the individual against 
the violence of another individual? Naive reasoning. Should we then 
admit that the supposed violence of a single individual is of greater 
importance and constitutes a greater danger than the organized, 
disciplined, superlatively armed violence of thousands and thousands of 
passive agents specially trained for the purpose?[...]It seems downright 
absurd to ask the State, the organ of the worst violence, to ensure the 
protection of individuals[...]. Only self-confidence and the 
renunciation of the mirage of state salvation will be able to restore to 
the deceived and disappointed masses the strength and courage to achieve 
their material and moral emancipation." So wrote Luigi Bertoni, editor 
of "Il Risveglio" in the late 1930s ( State Power and Violence , 
"Libertarian Almanac for Political Victims for the Year 1937", pp. 
47-48), and so we reaffirm today.

A. Soto

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/2026/09/20/la-punta-delliceberg/
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