Alex Pretti was on the ground, disarmed, pepper-sprayed, restrained by multiple ICE agents. Then he was shot dead. One question changes everything: why?

Those who regard the death – now formally declared a homicide - of Alex Pretti on a sunny January morning in Minneapolis as a reason to debate the context of ICE’s presence in Minnesota, are, I believe rather missing the point. The presence of a Federal law enforcement body, whether or not in pursuit of its legal duties, at the same place and time as Mr Pretti is of no significance at all. Neither, according to the much touted second amendment, is the fact that Mr Pretti chose to carry a licensed weapon.

There are, however, four glaring conclusions we may draw from this debacle. Mr Pretti’s killing demonstrates:

A glaring lack of separation between law enforcement and political agenda. Minnesota is the only Upper Midwestern state president Trump failed to win in his three successive bids for presidency. It is also home to 80,000 Somalis and is represented by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Somali who has repeatedly criticised President Trump and the Immigration Enforcement Agency. She and the Somalis in Minnesota have recently been the subject of a vast outpouring of President Trump’s ire.

A shooting by a federal agent embodying not the merest whiff of self-defence. According to numerous press and public reports from the scene Pretti’s presence, behaviour and actions presented no kind of threat to the agents in question. Mr Pretti’s firearm had been removed, he was at the time recumbent on the ground. He had been the victim of extensive pepper spraying and was being powerfully restrained by several ICE agents at the moment of his death.

An egregious attempt to mislead by the state. The administration’s immediate response came from the Secretary for Homeland Security, Ms Kristi Noem, who described Mr Pretti as “an individual who…had arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement”. The agent responsible for the homicide was described in the same briefing as having fired “defensive” shots “fearing for his life and the lives of those around him”.

A state sanctioned homicide. That the now identified agents responsible have not been the subject of criminal charges raises worrying questions as to the role and intentions of the state.

What does that all remind you of? It all seems rather reminiscent of the sort of actions a dissident might expect at the hands of Putin’s GRU in downtown Moscow.