Death Threats to Children: Quran Teacher Arrested in Rome

A private Quran teacher was arrested in the Torpignattara neighborhood of Rome on charges of child abuse. On the morning of July 3, the 4th Section of the Flying Squad of the Rome Police Headquarters, following a complex investigation coordinated by Maria Monteleone, Deputy Prosecutor of the Violence Unit of the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office, executed a pre-trial detention order against the Quran teacher, a 28-year-old Bangladeshi citizen. According to the investigation, the teacher had been abusing his young students, hurling serious insults and making death threats. The investigation began in January following a report to the State Police by several neighbors of alleged abuse suffered by two children during home Islamic religion lessons held by the teacher three times a week in a building in the Torpignattara neighborhood of Rome.

The investigations have revealed the 'sense of injustice' for the teaching methods that the children have suffered. The social network around the minors, both in the neighborhood and in the school environment, has been able to take charge of their request for help, contributing to the work of the investigators to stop the harassing and violent conduct of the teacher. The images viewed by the investigators have confirmed and highlighted the unconventional methods used by the teacher who, faced with the learning difficulties of the two minors, offended them, threatened to kill them, even using the handle of a broom for intimidation purposes, with beatings that caused small lesions on the children's bodies and crying fits. The Koran teacher was tracked down on the street while he was heading to the home of another family in the Bengali community to give religious lessons, and was arrested and taken to Regina Coeli. The parents of the abused minors were notified of the precautionary measure of the obligation to report daily to the judicial police, as a warning for having 'accepted' the brutal and violent methods of the religion teacher, thus contributing to the crime he was accused of.