The US State Department, its spokesperson explained, «works diligently to ensure that US law enforcement agencies comply with their legal obligations regarding notification and consular access when foreign nationals are detained in the United States, in accordance with applicable domestic law and in accordance with international obligations, in the same manner that we expect foreign governments to treat U.S. citizens abroad.”
On the night of February 25, Falcinelli – enrolled in a master’s degree in economics at Florida International University – was outside a club in Miami, with two policemen asking him to leave. The student insistently asks for his cell phones, which he claims were taken by the club’s bodyguards. Then he asks the officers their names and with one hand touches the badge of one of them. At that point the arrest is triggered: Matteo is pushed to the ground and handcuffed. Only then does one of the club’s bodyguards approach to hand over the boy’s phones to the officers.
The hours following the arrest were then documented by the officers’ body cams: in the security room of the police station, Falcinelli has his wrists tightened in the straps tied to his ankles behind his back. He was barefoot, surrounded by four officers who tied him up with theHotgie restrainthands and feet, until he almost suffocates: “We warned you”, they tell him while he breathes heavily, begs them to stop, screams in pain.
