Assaults and violent nights: young people from Ticino tell their stories (cross-border guide)

Context

In brief

• On 1° agosto 2025, a 19-year-old was beaten under the shelter.
• In 2024, the juvenile justice system opened 912 case files.
• Taha, 24, is awaiting expulsion from Switzerland.
• Summer news reports followed one another almost every day.

Key facts

• Date → 1° agosto 2025
• Location → Mario Botta bus shelter
• Victim → 19-year-old from Bellinzona
• Taha's sentence → 2 years and six months in detention
• Taha's prison → Kloten administrative detention center

On 1° agosto 2025, under the Mario Botta bus shelter, a 19-year-old from Bellinzona was punched and kicked by the group while he was lying on the ground. The incident is described as the most serious in recent times.

Fights and beatings mark the nights in Ticino, where summer crime reports followed one another at an almost daily pace. On a Saturday evening in April, some minors who hang around the bus shelter in Lugano describe what they see every weekend. “You see them every weekend,” one of them says. “They face off in gangs, in groups.”

The description also includes the presence of weapons. “Two boys were arguing; at a certain point, one of them pulled out a knife,” a minor recounts. The remarks come from an evening during which the youths talk about groups, gangs and clashes. The shelter is mentioned again in the case of the 19-year-old from Bellinzona, attacked by the group while he was already on the ground.

Taha's account

Taha is 24, was born in Iraq and arrived in Ticino as a refugee. Today, he is awaiting expulsion. His is not the account of a victim: for years, he was a violent attacker and never managed to curb his aggression.

“Violence was the worst problem I have ever had,” he says. He then sums up his attitude at the time: “I was immature, I was proud.”

Four years ago, he was sentenced to 2 years and six months in detention for an assault at the Locarno roundabout, the final episode of a turbulent adolescence. The young man speaks from behind the bars of the Kloten administrative detention center and links his aggression to the upbringing he received. “I was raised with violence,” he says. For this reason, violence appeared to him for a long time as the best solution to every problem. His story accompanies the account of the nights in Ticino and of an assault that, under the Mario Botta bus shelter, left a 19-year-old on the ground amid punches and kicks.

Operational details

In 2024, the juvenile justice authorities opened 912 case files, 18 percent more than the previous year. Over ten years, investigations increased by 37 percent. Residents, business owners and merchants are concerned about news reports dominated by brawls, beatings and stabbings.

The figure concerning minors and the alarm in Lugano

Luana Riva has lived in Molino Nuovo for years and today denounces a situation she considers out of control. «This has become the Bronx», she says. The woman witnessed a brutal beating that took place on via Trevano, for no apparent reason. A few dozen metres away, she also points out the site of a stabbing.

Her protest directly concerns the city's safety. «Is Lugano safe? Let a city councillor come and tell me that to my face!», she says furiously. Then she adds: «I'll offer him room and board and let him stay at my house for a week. Then he'll understand».

According to the boys interviewed at the bus shelter, the reasons for brawls can be trivial. A boy dressed in black from head to toe observes: «If you bother someone, it's normal for a fight to break out». And he adds: «If you talk about someone else's girl, then what has to happen happens».

Not everyone, however, considers Lugano a dangerous city. Another boy, holding a bottle of prosecco, comments: «You just have to avoid looking for trouble».

Giulio experienced violence firsthand. He was attacked by two young men in the middle of Piazza Grande in Locarno, over one look too many. After that incident, he says: «For a year or two, I stopped going out. If it happened once, it can happen again».

A surveillance camera will make it possible to reconstruct the events and nail the attackers, two Syrian brothers. Giulio does not hide his resentment: «I don't forgive them». To the boys, however, he sends a message opposed to fear: «Go out! You are not the ones who should limit your freedom. The problem isn't you; the problem is violent people».

The stories of Fabio and Matteo

Fabio, a pseudonym, accumulated around sixty charges during his adolescence, including assault, theft and extortion. He was one of the main figures in the massive brawl that broke out at the mouth of the Cassarate during lockdown. Two years and eight months in a community in Italy brought him back to a normal life. Looking back, he says: «As a child, I had to learn to survive. My mother wasn't even capable of cooking for me; I had to steal to eat».

Matteo had a similar path, marked by beatings, brawls and punches. He remembers the rivalry between groups: one spoke badly of the other, and arguments turned into feuds. Today he has left violence behind and reflects with detachment on what happened. «It stemmed from a deep inner sadness», he explains. «If you wanted to be the centre of attention, the easiest way was to use violence».

The statistics concerning minors, the residents' words and the accounts of those who went through those experiences paint a local picture in which concern coexists with different explanations: alcohol, pride, peer pressure and deeper suffering.

Key points

Hitting people for fun, as a pastime or out of boredom. The latest incidents that occurred during the Ticino carnivals also seem to confirm this drift: gangs of hooded and armed teenagers, ready to start a brawl and throw punches for no reason.

The ambushes during the carnivals

Some young victims ended up in the emergency room. The victims or their parents describe ambushes and completely gratuitous violence. In accounts of the Ticino evenings, the assault therefore does not always arise from an already open confrontation: in some cases, the gangs seem to prepare to strike without any explanation.

Music, artists and controversial role models

Taha observes that young people's aggressiveness follows the fashion of music and artists and the gangster game. He himself admits to having been influenced by certain controversial role models.

Fabio also speaks of an excessive trivialization of violence. «It's fashionable, violence is fashionable,» he says. In his view, this attitude seems to stem from trap songs, «which talk only about weapons, drugs, money».

Matteo considers those contents particularly influential on young people already adrift. «If you listen to the lyrics of today's songs, they always talk about weapons, drugs, power,» he says. And he adds: «A boy aged 12 to 17 who listens only to music like this is influenced by it».

The still-disputed expulsion

«The situation is getting worse and worse,» observes Taha, who knows the Ticino nights and their more hot-headed attendees well. At only 24, he dreams of a quiet domestic life, but disputes the expulsion. He says he has paid for what he did and would like to demonstrate that the path of redemption has been effective. Today he assures that he is a new and better person.

The step he is awaiting is the arrival of the travel documents. As soon as they arrive, he will have to leave Switzerland for an Iraq he does not know and where he has no ties. His future remains tied to that departure, while the young man continues to maintain that violence belongs to the past.

Taha closes his account with a melancholy smile: «Everything is getting worse, but good people exist. You just have to find them».

Source: rsi.ch