...he attended school and, according to a former girlfriend interviewed by the newspaper La Repubblica, hung out with friends at a spot near the entrance to the Villa Borghese park, not far from the tourist-packed Piazza del Popolo. His nickname was "Bambi".
"We called him that because of his big dark eyes, like those of a fawn, and his long, thick eyelashes," said the woman, now aged 26, whose name was not given by the newspaper. The nickname seems to have fitted with his personality in those days too.
"He didn't mix in bad company. If a fight broke out, he'd always step in to make peace," she said. After they started to go out, "we went to a disco every Saturday afternoon. He was obsessed with America. It was his dream. The music. Hip-hop.
"He dressed rapper-style. Trousers with a dropped crutch and a basketball vest. He drank alcohol: beer. He danced really well."
Mr Issac's former companion continued: "Everyone knew he was a Muslim and a believer, but he never talked about it to me, nor did he have any problems going out with those of us who were not Muslims. It was just that he didn't eat pork.
"As far as belief was concerned, we used to talk about what we believed in in life and whether we believed in God or not. He did."
But more than anything he was known as a rimorchione, an able and enthusiastic puller of the girls.
"Religion in that sense really wasn't an obstacle," the woman said.
As a teenager, Mr Issac spoke enough Italian to get by. But he knew English "much better," the woman said.
"He said he had studied in English in Ethiopia," the former girlfriend recalled.
His idol in those days was the US rapper Tupac Shakur, the son of a Black Panther, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles in 1996. ...