Man Dies Under Police Restraint in Italy, Sparking Protests and Investigation Calls

Human rights campaigners and Italy's opposition parties are demanding answers after a man died under police restraint as he pleaded for help, while government leaders defended the police.

The incident has been likened to George Floyd's murder in the United States six years ago, and also prompted comparisons with tactics used by the US's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Donald Trump.

Abderrahim Fakir, a 42-year-old from Morocco who moved to Italy when he was five, died on Sunday, local time, in Bologna while being forcibly held down by two police officers, according to a video shared widely on Italian media.

On Tuesday, after anti-police protests turned violent and left dozens of officers injured, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called for a full investigation into the death.

But Ms Meloni also criticised the protests in the aftermath which turned violent and left 56 officers injured, according to Italy's police union.

"Those who chose to use this incident as a pretext to lay waste to the city, attack officers and spread violence ... were not seeking the truth: they were seeking confrontation," Ms Meloni said.

In the video, Mr Fakir -- who reportedly suffered from heart issues and asthma -- repeatedly calls out "aiuto, aiuto, basta" ("help, help, that's enough") as the officers sit on him and ambulance workers look on.

After he stops moving, the police bind his ankles together.

Only after a moment or two do they and the ambulance workers check his vital signs, the video shows.

Called to the scene by local residents concerned by Mr Fakir's erratic behaviour, the police officers had told the ambulance personnel that he was "having a psychiatric episode", according to media reports.

"You can't die like this," Mr Fakir's sister Khadija told the Corriere della Sera daily.

"The police have to protect us. If someone is agitated, you have to calm them down... not kill them like a dog," she said.

Prosecutors in Bologna have opened a probe and have requested the officers' body cam footage.

'Inhumane'

The incident triggered a protest in Bologna on Monday in which participants, according to images posted on social media, held up slogans such as "Justice and truth for Fakir!" and "State murderers".

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told state television network Rai1: "Whoever makes insulting remarks against the police shows they have no trust in our law enforcement nor in our justice system (and) should look into what happened."

Italy's far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini also defended the police, while Galeazzo Bignami, head of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party in parliament's lower house, praised the officers' "professional conduct".

But Senator Ilaria Cucchi, whose brother died in custody in 2009, told AFP she was sickened by the "solidarity and thanks" expressed to police after such an "inhumane act".

Ms Cucchi, a member of the opposition Greens and Left alliance (AVS) party, slammed Ms Meloni and her right-wing coalition government, saying their "policies seeped in hatred and racism" have fostered a climate of violence.

Francesco Boccia, head of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) in the Senate, told the Repubblica daily that "if the right wants to import the ICE model, this is the wrong country for it. We have democratic antibodies".

Lawyer Barbara Spinelli told the ANSA news agency that she had met Fakir last year, when he applied to renew his permit to stay.

He was "a very kind, well educated, respectful person" who was in Italy legally, but who worried about being expelled.

"I told him: 'We are in Italy, a democratic country. Here the police respect the rules'," she said.

"I don't know how I will ever again manage to tell someone they don't need to be afraid", she added.