A member of Matteo Salvini’s League has been placed under house arrest after fatally shooting a Moroccan migrant in what the politician argued was a matter of self-defence.
League councillor Massimo Adriatici shot 39-year-old Moroccan migrant Youns Boussetaoui, who was reportedly described as often violent and known for having committed several crimes, at around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday in the town of Voghera in Lombardy. The politician, a lawyer and former policeman who is the municipal councillor for security, had allegedly come into conflict with the migrant at a local bar.
“I was walking in Piazza Meardi when I noticed that man harassing customers at a bar. I approached him, I reprimanded him and asked him to leave and at that point, I called the police. Hearing my phone call, he pushed me, causing me to fall. It was at that point that the shot was fired from the pistol I was already holding,” Mr Adriatici said according to newspaper Il Giornale.
Boussetaoui was shot in the chest after the League politician’s gun went off when he was on the ground. The Moroccan was taken to hospital and died of his wounds shortly after arrival.
Angelo Ciocca, a member of the European Parliament for the League, argued that the case was a “clear episode of self-defence”.
“If it were not for a man present there, a League councillor, already belonging to the police in the past and ready to intervene in defence of a girl harassed by a Moroccan, we would probably now be talking about violence on an innocent girl,” Ciocca argued.
“The dynamic is undoubtedly of self-defence, and the hope is that once again what happened will not be exploited politically. Being able to defend yourself is always a legitimate right,” he added.
Matteo Salvini also commented on the case, noting that Adriatici is a former police officer and a lawyer and asked to wait for investigators to reconstruct the incident rather than condemn him.
The Pavia prosecutor’s office, meanwhile, is said to be examining whether or not the case amounts to excessive force in self-defence after rejecting initial hypotheses of murder.
Matteo Salvini is well-known as a proponent of self-defence and gun ownership. While serving as interior minister, Salvini passed a law in 2019 to liberalise home defence laws.
The Italian senator has also pushed for the state to provide free legal expenses to those accused of crimes while defending their homes or property.
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