Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese has denied that migration had a role during the Milan News Year’s Eve sex attacks, despite several suspects being migrants, while others are second-generation immigrants.
Interior Minister Lamorgese spoke about the New Year’s Eve attacks this week, remarking that it was wrong to link migration and violence. She said: “Those who have used violence are boys, second-generation citizens, Italians even by birth so I would not combine the immigration discourse with violence, which unfortunately also occurs on the part of Italian citizens.”
While several of the suspects involved in the sex attacks that took place in the Piazza del Duomo on New Year’s Eve in Milan are Italians born to migrant parents, others are young migrant men who have only recently come to Italy, Il Giornale reports.
Two suspects were arrested this week in connection to the sexual assault of two German young women in Italy on New Year’s Eve, a 16 and a 17-year-old, both Egyptian nationals. One of the youths is said to be an illegal immigrant, while the other has legal residency in Italy.
The pair are believed to have been involved in sexual violence as well as a number of robberies, with the 16-year-old being accused of stealing the mobile phones from several people.
The two youths were identified by police after investigators examined local CCTV footage and spoke to witnesses, including the victims of the assaults. Facial recognition software was also used by investigators.
Silvia Sardone, a local Milan councillor for Matteo Salvini’s League, reacted to Lamorgese’s comments saying that migrants made up 57 per cent of the suspects in criminal complaints despite being around 20 per cent of the population of Milan.
“As for sexual violence, it is clear to everyone, except the left that pretends not to see, the greater propensity on the part of foreigners, especially North Africans as the shameful episodes of New Year’s Eve and Cascina Gobba teach us, to harass and assault women of any age,” Sardine added.
Last August, a 31-year-old Egyptian national named Haitham Mahmoud Abdelshafi Ahmed Masoud was arrested in Milan after brutally raping a 25-year-old near the Cascina Gobba train station. The Egyptian had come to Italy illegally three months prior, arriving on the island of Lampedusa.
“Behind every act of violence, there is a mother, a wife, a daughter, women who are harassed, assaulted, raped and humiliated by unscrupulous thugs who often have no right to stay in our country. Illegal immigrants that the left has welcomed into our city and then abandoned them to their fate,” Sardone said.
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