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01 October 2019A continuous violence, daily with slaps, fists, pushing humiliations, pulling ears, to children, very young from 4 to 5 and up to 10 years old who were wrong in reciting Islamic prayers, and for this reason arrested at dawn by men of the Digos of Padua.

Ill-treatment for the young 23-year-old Imam of the 'Bangladesh Cultural Center' Prayer Center was the right punishment for children mostly also of Bangladeshi origin, forced to live in a real state of terror and psychological pressure during the lessons , scheduled every afternoon, including Saturday and Sunday.

Ill-treatment that the children themselves had revealed to their parents, so much so that the first reports to investigators had come from within the Islamic community itself and to elementary school teachers, attended by children, and worried by the change of mood of some of their students. Mistreatment and violence that the children themselves did not understand, so much so that one of them addressed to his just slapped partner tells him: "but why not denounce him to the Questura?".

To stop this violence, the Digos men, after investigations of a few months, left at the beginning of the summer, following a ruling by the magistrate of Padua, this morning they have arrested the imam, in Italy with a residence permit for work reasons, expiring, for the crime of 'child maltreatment'. The Imam, in addition to teaching children, also took care of the prayers for the adult faithful who attended the Bangladesh Cultural Center. Digos of Padua, ties have also emerged with another association of citizens of Bangladesh of Pieve di Soligo (Treviso) already subject to another investigation for the same type of mistreatment.

Mayor: "Children don't touch"
"Thanks and my most sincere congratulations to the Public Prosecutor's Office and to the Digos for the investigative work that led to this morning's measures. Children do not touch and this intelligent work of the institutions to limit and repress unacceptable phenomena is the first pillar of a positive integration for which we all have to work ". Thus the mayor of Padua, Sergio Giordani comments on the Imam's arrest for ill-treatment to children. "It is significant and it is really hopeful that the operation in question is the result of the usual professionalism of the Judiciary and Police Forces in a relationship of listening and collaboration with the scholastic world and with the local Islamic community itself" he concludes.