(6 Aug 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Civitanova Marche - 6 August 2022
1. Charity Oriakhi, Alika Ogorchukwu's wife, during the march
2. Various of demonstrators during the march for Alika Ogorchukwu's death
3. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Selam Tesfay, immigrant activist from Milan who is part of the Italian Anti-racism Coordination:
"If there is, or not, racism in Italy it is out of the question: in Italy racism exists, there are racist laws allowing racism to keep existing and proliferate."
4. Close-up of hand holding a flower
5. Man shouting: "No to racism"
6. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Elisabetta Cipolletta, Protester:
"That moment, when people were filming, as though filming is the same thing to take action. Well no, no, it is not like this and in my opinion there is also a racial component (in this)."
7. Man holding banner reading (French): "Solidarity for the illegal immigrants"
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Desmond Okudaye, Macerata resident:
"Italians see us like animals, see us like, we are black, we are animals, and then this. Imagine what would happen in a time like you are fighting, two people fighting, you can see the video camera looking at them, nobody separated them. But I wish it was the black Italian person on top of the Italian guy, they would have called the 'Carabinieri' or called the police."
9. Various of demonstrators during the march
STORYLINE:
Two marches took place in a a well-to-do Adriatic beach town on Saturday as people sought justice in the brutal daylight killing of a Nigerian man at the hands of an Italian stranger.
One march organized by Nigerians living in the Macerata province was led by Alika Ogorchukwu's tearful widow and joined by two of his brothers.
Organizers of that march said they did not want the search for justice clouded by accusations of racism that they feel cannot be proven.
The second march, along the same route an hour later, was led by Black Italians from all over Italy demanding that authorities recognize the role of race in the July 29 killing.
A widely circulated video by one witness shows the aggressor wrestling Ogorchukwu to the ground and strangling him. One man's voice can be heard shouting for the aggressor to stop, but none of the several onlookers intervened physically, adding a layer of public outrage over apparent indifference.
Police arrested an Italian suspect, Filippo Ferlazzo, 32, but immediately ruled out a racial motivation for the attack. Ferlazzo's lawyer, Roberta Bizzarri, said prosecutors confirmed that determination in her client's charge sheet.
According to police, Ferlazzo first struck Ogorchukwu with a walking crutch the vendor used, having pursued him some 200 meters down a shopping street lined with high-end boutiques. Some accounts said Ogorchukwu had complimented Ferlazzo's companion while trying to make a sale or ask for spare change, others that he had touched or caressed the companion's arm.
Townspeople, taking the lead of law enforcement officials, have attributed the Nigerian man's death to an insistent street-seller unfortunately clashing with a man with a court-documented history of mental illness.
The role of race in the case is so charged that he pledged to keep the word racism off banners in the march that attracted some 200 people, mostly Nigerians.
City officials have expressed concern that the killing was being instrumentalized in early parliamentary elections set for September 25.
But Ogorchukwu's widow, Charity Oriakhi, is reluctant to say the killing was racially motivated.
AP video by Fanuel Morelli and Gianfranco Stara
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