He knew the language and means of protest communication, as well as digital communication mechanisms. But, according to investigators, he seems to have neglected information security, leaving traces that a foreign intelligence service would hardly have allowed to remain. During the checks, the Preventive Police also found manuals containing instructions on how to attack police officers.
Youssef Siher is not one of the angry young men who attacked Milan. He is 30 years old, speaks four languages, has studied political Islam, written for national newspapers, attended think tanks and now works for an American artificial intelligence company.
He has been a university student representative, a pro-Palestinian activist and the founder of a Muslim association. He also has a history that Italian intelligence services have known for years: for this reason, he has been the object of their attention since October 7, when he commented on a post by Matteo Salvini. Or, according to investigators, even earlier, after the murder of an Italian-Israeli soldier, under a post by Antonio Tajani. He is, according to investigators, the man who tried to put himself at the head of a leaderless revolt. But he did this later. Not from the beginning. Between October 17 and 18, after the clashes in Milan, the thirty-year-old is suspected of having independently opened the Instagram page of the October 17 Movement.
He distributes appeals, tries to give the protest a political direction and organizes new demonstrations. He is the one who, on Friday, announced the organization of “surprise protests”, with gatherings that would only be communicated at the last moment.
However, 48 hours before the police operation, the AISI (Italian Internal Intelligence Agency) had already identified him, as the Repubblica newspaper had reported the day before, and had begun to reconstruct his connections.
His name was not unknown. Raised in the Brescia area, originally from North Africa, Siher had studied at the State University of Milan, reaching the Academic Senate. In 2018 he had contributed to the founding of an association of Muslim university students, becoming its president. He had previously worked as a library assistant and as a courier for food distribution. He then obtained a university degree in Communication and completed his master’s degree in Political Science, with a thesis on Moroccan Islamic movements and their relations with the monarchy. In 2024 he arrived at the ISPI (Italian Institute for International Political Studies), at the Observatory for the Middle East and North Africa. The institute specifies that it was a professional internship and that, since then, there have been no other collaborations with him.
Meanwhile, he writes for the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, where he previously completed an internship. He also collaborates with the Voice Over Foundation, a collective of journalists, activists, researchers and artists committed to “social and climate justice.”
In July, he addresses the death of Abderrahim Fakir, a 42-year-old Moroccan man who died during an arrest in Bologna. “Fakir is not an isolated case,” he argues. His conclusion is emphatic: “Racist rhetoric works.”
Since January, he has been working for Mercor, an American company that deals with artificial intelligence systems. But it is above all his political journey that has attracted the attention of the intelligence services. As early as 2024, intelligence had signaled the creation of the “Alba Nascente” organization. The “Alba Nascente” organization was linked to Siheri and, according to information collected at that time, spread propaganda attributed to Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in European Muslim communities. It also contributed to the logistical organization of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and maintained relations with the antagonistic extreme left.
Relationships that were anything but simple. Siher had frequented social centers, before leaving them, according to the reconstruction made by the authorities, due to some anti-communist and, above all, anti-feminist positions. Analysts consider him close to some Iranian positions. They do not even rule out the possibility that he had contacts with North African intelligence circles, especially Algerian ones. “He was a prominent representative of political Islam,” says an intelligence source to the newspaper Repubblica. But there is no evidence to link these possible relationships with the creation of the October 17 Movement. In fact, the first results of the investigations indicate the opposite. Siher is suspected of having acted completely alone. “He certainly had the skills to do this,” notes a source with knowledge of the verifications carried out.
He knew the language and means of protest communication, as well as digital communication mechanisms. But, according to investigators, he seems to have neglected information security, leaving traces that a foreign intelligence service would hardly have allowed to remain. During the checks, the Preventive Police also found manuals containing instructions on how to attack police officers.
Siher is under investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office for incitement to commit criminal offenses, apology or glorification of criminal offenses, and organized violence during public demonstrations. The charges also include the aggravating circumstance of using information technology. But it is one thing to incite a protest on social media, and another thing to organize clashes. And it does not appear that he had a structure capable of directing violence. His profile fits more with the mechanisms of hybrid warfare: a person capable of getting involved in a mobilization that has already erupted, capturing people’s anger and multiplying its spread.
So, to fan the flames lit by others. But this does not prove that a foreign leadership structure is behind him. The identification of Siher only closes the first part of the investigation.
From now on, investigators must reconstruct who amplified the messages, through which networks, and with what interventions, if any, were organized. To answer the question that still remains open: Did Siher really act completely alone?
QUIET AND UNCONSCIOUS WHEN HE WAS ARRESTED
He was so calm and unaware that he was being targeted by the Police and DIGOS that Youssef Siher had no idea that they could catch him right there, in a friend’s apartment where he was staying with his wife (who is also under investigation), not far from Corvetto Square, in the heart of the city’s southeastern suburbs. The instructions for Saturday’s unexpected demonstration were left unwritten on his keyboard, before he was sent to the Police Station, where he had to answer questions from investigators, coordinated by prosecutor Francesca Crupi, throughout the afternoon and evening.
His arrest for inciting the commission of criminal acts with terrorist intent was carried out, but until late at night, the police and the prosecutor continued to closely check his social media profiles and his electronic devices, looking for conversations, contacts with potential collaborators and inciting messages. These are messages similar to those that the 30-year-old blogger, originally from Mazzano in the province of Brescia, where the home of his Moroccan parents was also searched, former collaborator of the newspapers Il Fatto and Il Foglio, and former researcher with a scholarship at ISPI, was supposed to publish yesterday on the Instagram page of the October 17 Movement.
(Taken from La Repubblica)