Police overpowered an Egy-ptian migrant after the 30-year-old broke through security and, rushing up to the high altar at Milan Cathedral, held a guard hostage at knifepoint. Brandishing a 20-centimeter switchblade, the assailant who possesses a long-term residence permit for family reunification reasons, forced his uniformed captor to kneel for over eight minutes.
Italy’s General Investigations and Special Operations Division (DIGOS), which interrogated the suspect, revealed that the man, currently living in the Lombardy region, was stopped by a police patrol while he was sitting on the cathedral steps.
Asked by officials from the Centro Commi-ssariat for his residence documents, the migrant attempted to stall police inquires. Suddenly, he broke free and ran towards the cathedral entrance reserved for worshippers and pushed aside a security officer who was guarding the door. Inside the cathedral, a second security guard accosted him after he had reached the high altar. However, the assailant pulled a knife on the guard and forced him to kneel and later sit on the floor.
Senior police officials, including Commissioner Mauro Frare and Deputy Commissioner Luca Gazzili, rushed to the scene and began negotiating with the hostage-taker. A policewoman from the Flying Squad tried to calm the assailant and with hands raised told him: “Do you want me to take off the belt? I’ll take it off. I want to help you, look, I’ll put it on the ground.”
At one point when the migrant was distracted, armed police took him by surprise and disarmed him. Milan has over 50,000 mostly Muslim illegal migrants. Italian newspaper Il Giornale noted that it has become a “symbol of decay and disarray from the point of view of public order, with stabbings and rapes every day and open-air drug dealing.”