Silvio Berlusconi was today accused of helping to create a "climate of racial hatred" after an Italian man of African origin was beaten to death in Milan for stealing biscuits.

Abdul Salam Guibre, 19, originally from Burkina Faso, was murdered by a shopkeeper and his son after they caught him stealing packets of biscuits from their snack bar near Milan railway station.

Witnesses said that they hurled racial abuse at him and then shouted "we'll kill you" as they repeatedly struck Mr Guibre with iron bars, leaving him lying in blood.

The two men, Fausto Cristofoli, 51, and his son Daniele 31, are under arrest and are expected to be charged with murder. Police said that Mr Guibre, who was brought up at Cernusco sul Naviglio near Milan from the age of three and worked in a local engineering factory, went into the shop with two companions — also of African orilgin — whle the Cristofolis were unloading a van and stole the biscuits.

The bar owners gave chase and knocked Mr Guibre to the ground, clubbing him repeatedly about the head. He was taken to hospital but died after seven hours in a coma. The Cristofolis told police they thought that the thieves had stolen the takings from the till as well as snacks.

Walter Veltroni, leader of the opposition, said that the right had come to power in April's elections by exploiting Italians' fears of street crime, gyspies and illegal immigrants. It had created "an atmosphere of hate and intolerance" he said, adding: "The Right is ruining this country. We are in the autumn of Italian democracy."

Paolo Ferrero, a Communist deputy, accused the Northern League, a key element in the Berlusconi coalition, of pursuing "a racist and xenophobic policy in which immigrants are seen as the root of all evil".

However Robert Maroni, the Interior Minister, who is a Northern League leader, said that the left was using the murder to "falsely accuse the right" of racism.

Mr Maroni said that the law and order package adopted by the Government after it took office, including the fingerprinting of Roma gypsies and the deployment of troops on Italian streets alongside police, was intended to "give our citizens greater security".

He said that the attack on Mr Guibre had nothing to do with racism.

Francesco Messina, the police officer leading the investigation into Mr Guibre's death, agreed that it did not appear to be a "xenophobic attack" but rather "an impulsive act of aggression".

Letizia Moratti, the mayor of Milan, condemned the attack as "an act of vile cruelty which has nothing in common with Milan's tradition of tolerance". The Milan murder comes after an attack last month on an Angolan student in Genoa and another on a 15-year-old boy from Sri Lanka in Milan in July.

Andrew Howe, a black athlete who was born in Los Angeles but has lived in Italy since he was five and has Italian nationality, said that he believed the attack was "an isolated episode. The Italians are not racists. I have never felt discriminated against in Italy because of the colour of my skin".

Assani Guibre, the dead man's father, said that his son was a "good lad" and that he did not believe he had stolen anything. He said that he had asked Mrs Moratti to organise a municipal funeral to demonstrate her administration's opposition to racism.

Last week Gianni Alemanno, the right-wing mayor of Rome, caused a furore by declaring during a visit to Israel that while the "race laws" passed by the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini had been "absolute evil", the Fascist system as a whole had not.

The ensuing row worsened when the Defence Minister, Ignazio La Russa — who, like Mr Alemanno, is from the Alleanza Nazionale, the reformed descendant of Mussolini's Blackshirts — observed during a ceremony honouring wartime Resistance fighters that troops who fought for Mussolini after he was deposed in late 1943 had also done so out of patriotic motives and "fought in the belief they were defending their country".

In an indirect rebuke President Napolitano, a former Communist, said: "All the social, political and intellectual components" of Italy's postwar democracy came from those who opposed the Nazis and their Italian Fascist allies.

Mr Alemanno was also slapped down by Gianfranco Fini, the Alleanza Nazionale leader, who said that the Fascist system had been "absolute evil" in its entirety because it was totalitarian and anti democratic. Mr Fini, who has sought to distance himself from the Mussolini legacy and develop close ties with Jewish groups, is seen by some as a possible eventual successor to Mr Berlusconi as leader of the centre Right alliance.

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