The judge for preliminary investigations did not validate the arrest of the administrator of the Telegram chat and of the 'October 17 Movement' Instagram page. In the reasons, he noted that there are no serious indications of guilt in relation to the alleged crimes. In particular, according to the judge, the contents published by the researcher did not contain explicit references to the use of violence nor did they indicate the devastation as a model to be replicated in subsequent mobilisations.
Youssef Siher has been released. The investigating judge of Milan Tiziana Landoni decided not to validate the request for validation of the detention and the application of the precautionary measure in prison proposed by the prosecutor Francesca Crupi, head of the investigation with the prosecutor Marcello Viola, considering both the danger of repetition of the crime and the risk of escape to exist. The Italian researcher with Moroccan origins was arrested last Saturday night as administrator of the Telegram channel 'October 17 Movement' opened after two days of looting and devastation in Milan on charges of incitement to crime aggravated by the aim of terrorism and organized violence in public demonstrations. Prime Minister Giogia Meloni called the investigating judge's decision "shameful".
In the order with which the investigating judge of Milan did not validate the detention and did not apply any precautionary measures for Siher, we read: "In the posts and in the press release referred to above, the suspect never envisages the use of violent actions or the adoption of other behaviors which constitute a crime, nor does he appear to have evoked the serious violence that occurred on 17 and 18 October 2026 (not even mentioned by him) as a model for implementing the forms of protest and collective mobilization proposed by him". The judge adds that "there are currently no serious indications of guilt against him".
Landoni also explained that the administrator of the Telegram chat 'October 17 Movement', born after the devastation of the weekend in Milan, "has, in fact, limited himself to promoting a collective, 'conscious' mobilization of protest against current government policies, capable of involving the greatest number of people, with the aim of encouraging, as he expressly declared, the formation of a collective conscience". The suspect's reference to the mobilizations organized in France "is absolutely generic and there are no allusions to acts of violence or to the adoption of behaviors constituting a crime. Siher seems, rather, to recall the constancy and in general the activism that has characterized the French protest movements, without glorifying, in any way, the violent conduct carried out by some demonstrators".
According to Landoni, it cannot be argued that Siher's conduct "was aimed at exercising forms of coercion against top bodies of the institutions, nor that they were supported by the purpose of subverting the democratic order of the State". According to the judge, not only are there "no serious indications of guilt against the suspect", but "the disputed aggravating circumstance" of terrorism would not be recognisable. Siher's verbal actions "could not be considered such as to cause serious damage to the State (the offense potentially created by them does not appear to be necessarily of a necessarily macroscopic dimension), nor do they appear to have been carried out with the aim of intimidating the population, causing a profound and lasting disturbance in society as a whole, considering the same intentions expressed by him in the two press releases published within the Telegram group and the attempt to promote the formation of a collective conscience, also involving people not belonging to political realities".
