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Shock arrest in Miami for a 25-year-old Italian student. This is what the newspaper «La Nazione» on its website. Matteo Falcinelli, this is the name of the Italian arrested in Miami last February, was in Florida to attend a Master’s degree at the Florida International University, the newspaper reports, he was knocked to the ground by the Miami police and his face was pressed against his on the asphalt with the officer’s knee pressed against his neck. Once in a transit cell at the North Miami Beach police station, four of them, according to «La Nazione», hogtied him for 13 minutes, subjecting him to hogtie restraint.
With a strap they tied his feet to the handcuffs behind his back and pulled, until the 25-year-old Italian student from Spoleto begged them to stop because he literally felt like he was breaking. ‘Please, please, please’ would have been the words spoken in a faint voice between tears and unspeakable heartbreak. The scenes of violence, the newspaper reports, were filmed by the bodycams worn by the officers, including the one inside the police station, which the Italian student’s American lawyer managed to obtain from the prosecutor’s office only on April 12 as part of the trial , which effectively ended with admission to the PTI (Pre Trail Intervention), a sort of re-education programme.
A story that began on the night between 24 and 25 February but which the student’s family wanted to report only now that the young man has accepted the program ordered by the judge which will nullify the four charges for resisting a public official, opposition to arrest without violence and trespass.
Accusations for which the 25-year-old had been arrested during a nighttime intervention in a club by off-duty officers. “What exactly happened that night – writes the newspaper – will be a matter of investigation: the family wants to file a formal complaint for the abuse, the declarations not corresponding to the truth and made under oath, the illegitimate arrest and torture suffered by the young man and invoking the Fourth Amendment”. The police will write that they intervened in the bar where the student was because the boy had created problems in the place so much so that he was thrown out and that he resisted arrest, resisting the officers because he wanted the 500 dollars he spent back.
Farnesina: Tajani urges maximum attention to the case
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has already asked the United States Ambassador to Italy Jack Markell for maximum attention to the case, recalling that the Italian Government dutifully follows every case of detention of Italian citizens abroad. This is what we read in a note from the Farnesina, which recalls that since the beginning of the affair the Italian consulate general in Miami has been following the case of the compatriot, 25 years old from Spoleto, arrested by the police in Miami Beach on the night between February 24 and 25 and released after two days.