Random murder of young woman ignites immigration debate in Italy

A man who was born in Milan to parents of African origin confessed to the crime, but said he did not know the victim

The brutal murder of a woman in northern Italy allegedly by the son of African migrants has shocked Italians and reignited debate about migration and the right to citizenship.
Moussa Sangare, 31, is accused of stabbing Sharon Verzeni to death while she was taking a late night stroll in the small town of Terno d’Isola, near the northern city of Bergamo, on July 29.
Police said Mr Sangare, who was born in Milan to parents of African origin, confessed to the crime after he was arrested on Friday. However, he said he did not know the victim and had no apparent motive for the woman’s murder.
“I had a sudden outburst,” Mr Sangare told police after his arrest, according to Italian media reports. “I can’t explain why it happened, I saw her and I killed her.”
The young man, who was unemployed and described as an aspiring rapper, lived in Suisio, just 3 miles from the town where 33-year-old Ms Verzeni was killed.
Mr Sangare told police he left home on his bicycle about an hour before the murder, armed with a knife and with the intention of stabbing anyone he met. Before encountering Ms Verzeni, he said he had threatened two teens.
He told investigators he found Ms Verzeni staring at the stars, apologised for what he was about to do and stabbed her several times in the back while she repeatedly asked him “Why?”
The arrest of Mr Sangare ends an intense investigation during which police took DNA samples from 40 residents and analysed footage from surveillance cameras in the town of 8,000 people in a bid to identify the killer.
Mr Sangare’s younger sister, Awa, has said her family was shocked and sorry for what had happened. “We knew he was not well, but we never thought it could have come to this,” she told local outlet Eco.
Deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right League party, seized on the case to push his anti-immigration stance at a time when foreign minister Antonio Tajani, is urging the government to grant citizenship to foreign minors who complete most of their education in Italy.
Mr Salvini posted a photo of the murder victim on his Instagram with the headline: “Moussa Sangare arrested, of North African origins and Italian citizenship, suspected of having killed poor Sharon”.
Rossano Sasso, a League MP, insisted Sangare was not really Italian, writing online that he feared there are “many other Moussa Sangares walking our streets, who hate and who kill ‘because they had nothing to do’.”
Luana Zanella, an MP from the Green Party, accused Mr Salvini of linking femicide with ethnic identity, while Riccardo Magi, an MP from More Europe, dismissed the political reaction as shameful.
“Using a crime to oppose a debate that has opened in the country about citizenship is really disgraceful exploitation,” Mr Magi said.