Emmanuel Chidi Nnamdi: After escaping Boko Haram, Nigerian killed by Italian racists
With AFP
A man was arrested on suspicion of killing Nigerian asylum seeker Emmanuel Chidi Nnamdi on Thursday.
The 36-year-old was beaten to death in a racist attack by a right-wing football hooligan in the central Italian town of Fermo, in Marche.
Amedeo Mancini, 35, was arrested on suspicion of murder on Thursday morning.
Nnamdi was walking with his wife, Chinyere, on Via Veneto in Fermo on Tuesday night when they suffered racial abuse. The football hooligan allegedly called Chinyere, 24, a “monkey”.
That led to an altercation and Chidi was brutally beaten on the head, reportedly with a road-sign pole, until he fell to the ground.
The attack caused a brain hemorrhage that resulted in an irreversible coma. Nnamdi died on Wednesday.
Il Governo oggi a Fermo con don Vinicio e le Istituzioni locali in memoria di #Emmanuel
Contro l'odio, il razzismo e la violenza.— Matteo Renzi (@matteorenzi) July 7, 2016
The couple arrived in Italy last year after escaping an attack by the Islamic extremist group, Boko Haram, at a church in Nigeria in which they each lost their parents and their daughter.
Chinyere also lost her baby after the perilous Mediterranean crossing.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi took to Twitter to condemn “hatred, racism and violence”.
But Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was yet to speak about this killing as at the time we published this post.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano attended a security meeting in Fermo on Thursday, after which he announced that Chinyere would be granted refugee status.
Laura Boldrini, president of the chamber of deputies, spoke of her “dismay” and “outrage” on hearing the news that “a man who escaped the ferocity of Boko Haram terrorists in his country was killed, here in Italy, because of hatred, racism and xenophobia”.
The couple had been living in the area for eight months and were lodged in a shelter run by Catholic charity Caritas. Chinyere has been moved to another centre..
