Ramy charge of road homicide remains 'for now'

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 10 - A charge of vehicular homicide in last month's fatal Milan police car chase of a 19-year-old Egyptian-Italian man who jumped a control point on the back of a scooter driven by a 22-year-old Tunisian friend will remain for now and has not yet been upgraded to homicide with intent after the release of a potentially incriminating video, prosecutors said Friday.
    They said the vehicular homicide charge would stay in place pending more expert analyses and controls including a "cinematic consultancy".
    In the video, Carabinieri pursuing Ramy Elgaml and the scooter driver Fares Bouzidi cursed after failing to knock the scooter down and then shouted "good" when it did fall.
    The video appeared to show the lead patrol car drive into the scooter at the end of the eight-kilometre chase, which reportedly started when Elgaml decided to jump the checkpoint because he didn't have a valid license.
    The video also appeared to show officers approaching a witness and possibly intimating to him that he should erase evidence of the fatal crash, as he had maintained.
    The incident sparked several days of unrest in the high-crime former working class Corvetto district where the young man lived, in which several police were hurt.
    More officers were hurt in a "solidarity" protest by anarchist squatters in Turin Thursday night.
    The incident is splitting Italian politics with rightwingers defending the police action and leftwingers calling for the cops to be prosecuted, invoking past, isolated episodes of police brutality. (ANSA).