The Italian Government has branded as shameful a court ruling that freed the man accused of running the online movement behind the October riots in Milan.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a social media video on October 28 that the decision not to validate the arrest of Youssef Siher was an unbearable affront to police and investigators. She said the Telegram page he allegedly ran had stirred up the protests that ended in the looting of shops in central Milan on October 17 and 18.
Siher, a 30-year-old Italian researcher and freelance journalist of Moroccan origin, was detained on October 24. Prosecutors charged him with incitement to commit crimes aggravated by terrorist aims and with organised violence at a public demonstration, according to AFP.
Preliminary investigations judge Tiziana Landoni rejected prosecutor Francesca Crupi’s request to keep him in custody, finding no serious evidence of guilt. In her ruling, cited by Il Sole 24 Ore, she said Siher had called for protest and civil disobedience against government policy but had not advocated violence.
He left Milan’s San Vittore prison the same afternoon to applause from supporters. He and his wife remain under investigation.
Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called the release incredible and asked whether the judge would pay out of her own pocket for any fresh damage, starting with marches due in Milan today. Fellow Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani said the decision put national security at risk.
Italian news agency Adnkronos reported that both Landoni and Crupi had signed a September 2025 appeal for Gaza backed by 3,135 magistrates, academics and lawyers. Italian media have linked Siher to pro-Palestinian groups.
Milan court president Fabio Roia and senior judge Ezia Maccora said the political attacks were inadmissible and betrayed a misunderstanding of the rule of law.
Most members of the Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM), the judiciary’s governing body, have asked it to open a procedure to protect Landoni. Meloni denied attacking judges, saying after a cabinet meeting that she was defending the servants of the State who had prevented a repeat of the violence.
Italian MEP Ilaria Salis, of the Greens and Left Alliance (AVS), defended Siher, calling the charges ridiculous and the government’s security laws liberticidal. Salis spent more than a year in Hungarian custody, charged with attacking right-wing activists, before entering the European Parliament in 2024.
Left-leaning daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, for which Siher has written, reported that the Telegram page was set up on the evening of October 18, after the worst of the rioting.
The government has since sent 500 extra soldiers to Milan and approved an emergency decree on public order as cost-of-living unrest spread across the European Union.
