" You will rot in prison, you have no rights ." This is what the agents allegedly said to Matteo Falcinelli, the 25-year-old from Spoleto who was the victim of violent treatment during an arrest in Florida . The young man, a student in the States, was blocked outside a room by the police, then slammed to the ground, with his face pressed to the asphalt, and taken to prison. The images, which have now gone around the world, causing indignation in Italy, also show what happened in the cell, when Matteo was "hogtied" for 13 minutes, with his wrists tied with straps to his ankles.
But in addition to the images shown by the officers' bodycams, there is an entire chapter of the story that speaks of harassment comparable to torture, told by the young man, on whom his mother Vlasta Studenicova and the family's lawyers are gathering information.
Falcinelli, as Corriere della Sera explains, entered the North Miami Beach station at 3.38 am on February 25, when he was registered in the computer system. From the fight outside the club onwards there were 18 hours of silence, in which family and acquaintances no longer heard from him. The two friends who joined him in the police station are prevented from speaking to Matteo, who is effectively denied the right to call a lawyer because the agencies that pay bail "don't trust a foreigner and he doesn't have the number a reference person who you remember by heart." And when the family pays the bail of 4 thousand dollars they are notified almost a day later.
In the meantime he enters the cell, without being examined by a doctor. Injured, weak and in pain he asks for a pillow and blankets, which are denied to him: " Here you have no rights, you will rot in prison ", the officers allegedly responded, mocking him. Once free, the ordeal began with hospitalization in a psychiatric clinic for 5 days and return to his accommodation. The mother said she was shocked by what happened to her son: «Seeing him recover from torture made me feel bad. They did something inhumane to him, which I only remember seeing at school when they made us watch films of how the Gestapo tortured prisoners in concentration camps: they went beyond all limits."
(Unioneonline/vf)
