He had been arrested a few hours earlier, before being released. According to the indictment, he is alleged to have attacked a woman he did not know on the Milan underground that afternoon and injured her in the face with a knife.This is the sequence of events involving Mohammed Saidi, the 27-year-old man who was arrested after the attack on a young woman at Duomo station. According to the reconstruction by the newspaper Corriere della Sera, the young man had already been arrested by the police the previous night for theft and for damaging several parked cars. Although a judge confirmed his arrest, he was subsequently released. A few hours later, the attack on the subway allegedly took place.
Mohammed Saidi, a 27-year-old Algerian national who is staying in Italy without valid residency status, is now accused of having injured the face of a 23-year-old woman of Moroccan origin with a blade. After his initial arrest and subsequent release, the young man is said, according to the first findings of the local police investigation, to have wandered aimlessly through the city before reaching the center of Milan.
It is alleged that he encountered the young woman on the platform of Underground Line 3. The incident took place in the afternoon on the platform at Duomo station in full view of dozens of people. According to investigators, the young woman was with friends when the man is said to have asked her why she was staring at him. She is said to have denied looking at him, but the exchange is said to have quickly escalated. According to investigators, the 27-year-old is said to have shouted: “Why are you staring at me like that? I’m a man and I’m a Muslim,” before punching her and then stabbing her in the face with a knife. Witnesses immediately raised the alarm, enabling the police to intervene quickly.