“He was tortured: you just need to see the videos to understand.” He doesn’t mince words the mother of Matteo Falcinellithe 25-year-old Italian boy who – as shown in a video released by the Quotidiano Nazionale – was arrested and hogtied for 13 minutes by the police to You love me. «What my son suffered must never happen again. They took away Matteo’s smile and destroyed his dreams, even leading him to try to take his own life”, added Valsta Studenikova, originally from Slovakia but an Italian citizen, interviewed by QN.
Matteo Falcinelli, Italian student arrested in Miami. «Hogtied and tortured for 13’». The shocking images
Who is Matteo Falcinelli
Matteo Falcinelli is the 25 year old boy of Spoleto arrested in Miami by the police. The young man was in the USA to follow a Masters at Florida International University (at the Biscayne Bay Campus) when he was arrested on February 25, 2024.
For the student it was not the first time in the United States and in particular in Miami, as evidenced by his photos on social media.
How are you
Matteo Falcinelli, who was joined in Miami by his parents, was hospitalized for five days in a psychiatric hospital after his arrest, in shock, and even attempted to end it. «He is followed by psychologists and psychiatrists – says his mother – he was initially hospitalized due to his serious injuries, then transferred to a psychiatric hospital because he was at risk of suicide. Even now at night he dreams of the arrival of the police who are torturing him and he wakes up screaming.”
«He has nerve damage in both hands caused by the handcuffs being tightened until his blood stopped circulating: at first he couldn’t hold a cup in his hand, and now he can’t open a bottle. He also has neck and back problems,” he added.
The complaint
The episode dates back to the night between 24 and 25 February but Matteo’s family wanted to report it only now that the young man has accepted the program ordered by the judge which will nullify the four charges for resisting a public official, opposing the arrest without violence and trespass. The boy was released from prison the same night thanks to a collection made by his friends who raised the $4,000 needed for bail.
The arrest
According to the reconstruction made in the family’s complaint, on the night between 24 and 25 February Matteo Falcinelli entered a bar thinking it was a place like any other. Only once he ordered a drink would he discover that he was in a nightclub for strippers and that the company of a girl cost from 500 dollars and up. It is not clear whether the boy refused to pay or asked for the money already paid back, but after a few drinks and having lost his cell phones which were later recovered thanks to a bouncer, Matteo found the police waiting for him outside the club.
Hands and feet tied like a kid
At this point the young man would have been slammed to the ground, with his face pressed to the asphalt, and then taken to prison. Once in a transit cell at the North Miami Beach police station, four of them allegedly hogtied him and subjected him to hogtie restraint. They tied their feet to handcuffs behind their backs with a strap, pulling for 13 minutes. The scenes of violence would have been filmed by the bodycams worn by the officers, including the one inside the police station, which the young man’s American lawyer managed to obtain from the prosecutor’s office only on April 12 as part of the trial, which effectively ended with admission to the PTI (Pre trail intervention), a sort of re-educational programme.
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