"They Threw Him Down": Police Officers Sentenced in Case of Disabled Romani Man Who 'Fell' from Window During Raid
12 February 2026
In the latest development in the Hasib Omerovic case, the Court of Rome sentenced one police officer, acquitted another, and sent the case of a third agent for trial. In July 2022, Hasib Omerovic, a disabled Romani man, allegedly ‘fell’ from a second-floor window during a violent police raid on his home in the Primavalle district of Rome.
The judge sentenced agent Alessandro Sicuranza to one year and four months for forgery, and acquitted agent Maria Rosa Natale of the same charge. The trial of police officer Andrea Pellegrini, accused of torture and forgery, was set for 2 November 2026. A fourth policeman who had previously pleaded guilty received a sentence of 11 months and 16 days.
The disputed facts of the case
In the immediate aftermath of the raid, the police officers claimed in their initial statement that Hasib Omerovic, "threw himself from window falling into the internal courtyard of the building, where he was then rescued by the 118 who transferred him to the Gemelli hospital". This was completely at odds with Hasib’s sister’s account of what happened:
"I opened the door and a woman and men dressed normally entered, the woman closed the door of the hall, asked for Hasib's documents, took the photos, they beat him with the stick, Hasib fell and they started punching and kicking him... he ran into his room and shut himself up ... they broke the door ... they punched and kicked him, took him off his feet and threw him down."
Neither did the police account square with the state of the apartment when the family returned that fateful morning to find their home in disarray, Hasib's documents scattered on a table, the door to his room smashed, a broom handle broken in two; in addition, a radiator pipe had been wrenched from the wall, window shutters forced open, and they found traces of Hasib’s blood on a sweatshirt and his bedsheets.
According to the Judge’s reconstruction for preliminary investigations, the police officer Pellegrini, after entering the house, had hit Omerovic "with two slaps in the area between the neck and the face". Pellegrini had then broken down the door of Omerovic's bedroom, although the latter "had promptly taken action to hand over the keys". Once inside the room, he forced the 36-year-old to sit on a chair and, after having torn out a cable from the fan, used it "to tie Omerovic's wrists, again brandishing the kitchen knife at the man, threatening him" and then hitting him again.
The investigating judge stated that the victim was so traumatized and terrified, that he probably sought to escape “the situation of subjugation due to the multiple and repeated acts of violence and threats that he was suffering and that he probably feared he would continue to suffer and for which he did not understand the reasons".
Failed cover-up: Not just another attempted suicide
Immediately after the raid and defenestration of Omerovic, the police concocted a cover story of an attempted suicide in the course of a routine enquiry, which according to what Agenzia Nova learned, would have ended with a prompt closure of any investigation. It was the media attention prompted by Più Europa MP Riccardo Magi's parliamentary questions, that prevented this being written off as another attempted suicide tucked away in the capital’s crime news, as “the story of the thirty-year-old deaf-mute who threw himself out of the window of his apartment.”
The ’Omerovic case’ is an egregious example of a far wider phenomenon of police violence and discrimination against Roma and other minorities. The PACE Standing Committee stressed the systemic nature of this anti-Roma violence by law enforcement, and includes “inhuman and degrading treatment, torture, excessive use of force, and violence resulting in some cases in the victim’s death.” In its 2024 report on Italy, ECRI was concerned about the many complaints of racial profiling by police that impacts especially on Roma and people of African descent, and bluntly expressed its regret that “little or no action has been taken over the last few years to ensure better accountability in cases of any racist or LGBTI-phobic abuse committed by state police officers, carabinieri and other law enforcement officials.”
