Rabat – Unidentified assailants have set fire to the Marrakech Lounge Bar, owned by a Moroccan expatriate in Milan’s Pioltello, on Thursday, following the terrorist attack in Manchester last Monday.
The mystery assailants threw a Molotov cocktail at the café lounge belonging to a Moroccan expatriate in the commune of Pioltello, located in the east of Milan. The incident, which was in retaliation for the terrorist attack in Manchester on Monday that claimed the lives of 22 people, took place in the early hours of May 25.
The attackers were motivated by the allegations of a journalist, Carmelo Abbate, who claimed in a national TV channel that people in the same café lounge “cheered and rejoiced” over the attack at the end of Ariana Grande Manchester’s concert.
Italian authorities are currently investigating the claims of the Italian journalist and have stated that no evidence has confirmed the controversial allegations. The Carabinieri forces in the commune, however, have denied them.
Italian news source, Adnkronos, which branded the allegations of the journalist as “fake news,” reported on the statement of the Moroccan expatriate who has lived in the same area for 15 years. Adil, the 30-year-old expat, utterly rejected the allegations saying, “you never rejoice for a massacre and I certainly did not do that.”
Adil told Adnkronos that he feels “as a citizen of Pioltello” and that strangers came to him after the allegations were made and told him they did not believe them. He noted that he and his Russian orthodox wife “are afraid” and that he wants compensation for the moral and material damage inflicted upon him.
The Mayor of Pioltello and the President of the Security Forces held a press conference to shed light on the incident and alert the media to the dangers of fake news, especially in similar contexts. She reminded citizens that more than one fourth of the commune’s population is Muslim and that no security issues have ever surfaced in the area prior to this incident.
