«We recognize the concerns raised by the Italian government and the Falcinelli family regarding the circumstances of the arrest of Matteo Falcinelli in Miami. We understand that the Miami police have opened an internal investigation into this case. We will continue to monitor these developments”: a spokesperson for the US State Department told ANSA, responding to a question about the violent arrest of the Italian student in Miami.
It is the first official reaction from the US government after the controversy over the case.
Matteo Falcinelli arrested in Miami, the mother: «Tortured like in the films about the Gestapo, they were inhumane»
Falcinelli, the first reaction from the USA
The US State Department, explained its spokesperson, «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 the law applicable national law and in accordance with international obligations, in the same manner that we expect foreign governments to treat U.S. citizens abroad.”
The mother’s words
Matteo was subjected to “torture and I would like to say, in my opinion, the arrest was also unfounded: they did something inhumane, which I remember seeing at school when they showed us films of how the Gestapo tortured prisoners in the concentration. They exceeded every limit.” Vlasta Studenicova, Matteo’s mother, goes into detail about the tragic incident that happened to her son who, following instructions from his lawyers, cannot speak publicly. However, her mother is the perfect spokesperson for him.
“If violence in the United States is involuntarily touching an officer’s tag, then what do we want to call what they did to Matteo?”, says Studenicova in an interview with ANSA from Florida International University where, despite everything, Matteo completed the semester successfully with two As and one A-. The evening of the accident was the start of spring break and Matteo had decided to celebrate it with a drink: he had tried to call two of his friends to go out with them but they were working and so he had gone out alone. He had chosen Dean’s Gold because it was close to campus, he didn’t know that it was a club for men only. “It was a death strip,” says Studenivoca, recounting that, in the club, his son had been approached by a woman who had offered him sexual services for half an hour for 500 dollars, while if he had wanted an hour he would have needed 1,000 dollars.
The reconstruction
Matteo had refused, walked away, shortly after he started talking to another girl, Giselle, and went to order vodka and red bull for both of them. It is from that moment that strange things happen: first the phones that Matteo can no longer find and are at the entrance and then the repeated questions from the girl who asked him if he was feeling well. “Our suspicion is that they gave him drugs,” explains Studenicova. «Around two o’clock Matteo decides to go home and go to pay, from that moment he is completely backout, he remembers absolutely nothing until 3.38 when they arrest him and press his head against the asphalt. There he remembers the strong pressure on his head and that is his first memory, so he doesn’t know why he finds himself in that situation and what happened”, adds the boy’s mother, emotionally speaking, saying that Matteo welcomed her after the accident by telling her: «Mom, not even as a child did I need a hug like I do now. Also about Marco and I wish you would never leave me again. From that moment on I slept in my arms with him. He has nightmares, he asks not to hurt him.”
The officers “threw him to the ground, subjected him to psychological violence, he attempted suicide in the police car”, adds Studenicova, recalling that three charges were brought against the boy. Dean’s Gold has dismissed its initial accusation of “trespassing and why we cannot access their cameras and see the recordings.” Matteo’s mother went to the “infamous” place to see the positioning of the cameras and study the place. “We ordered drinks with some friends but didn’t drink them,” she says. In prison “they put him in an orange jumpsuit and gave him the top bed without a ladder but due to his injuries he had great difficulty reaching it”, he says, reporting that the officers did not notify the consulate nor his family, who by law they should be contacted in case of injuries. The first hearing in the trial against Matteo was held on March 26, but it was a stalemate because «there was no information, or rather the formalization of the charges. The judge then scheduled another hearing for March 28 but even in that case the charges had not yet been formalized. On April 8, the charges were filed and the prosecution requested a year of probation and an anger management course. The judge postpones the decision until the next day and asks the prosecution to hear the officers – highlights Studenicova -. On April 9, the prosecution responds that the officers did not respond. The judge decides for a PTI, pre trial intervention, and grants him a ‘motion to travel’ from 27 April to 10 June”. Matteo intends to return to the United States and finish his studies probably already in the spring, after an accident that slowed him down a bit.
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