[color=black]14 April 2004, ex-Iraq, Fabrizio Quattrocchi:
“Now I show you how an Italian dies!”
‘‘Quando gli assassini gli stavano puntando la pistola contro, questo ragazzo ha cercato di togliersi il cappuccio e ha gridato: adesso vi faccio vedere come muore un italiano. E lo hanno ucciso’’. ‘‘Fabrizio Quattrocchi e’ morto cosi’‘, ha raccontato il ministro Frattini, precisando di avere avuto l’ autorizzazione della madre e dalla sorella a rivelarlo.
Italian hostage ‘defied killers’
Al-Jazeera earlier broadcast pictures of the Italians
The Italian hostage killed by kidnappers in Iraq was a defiant “hero” in his final moments, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini says.
The dead man was identified as Fabrizio Quattrocchi, 36, a security guard.
As the gunman’s pistol was pointing at him the hostage “tried to take off his hood and shouted: ‘now I’ll show you how an Italian dies,’” he said.
“And they killed him. He died a hero,” Mr Frattini said, adding the family had authorised him to reveal the details.
The Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera said it had video footage of the death, but would not broadcast it, because it was “too gruesome”.
The enemy we face today would have to rise far to earn even our contempt. Fabrizio’s captors wanted not just to kill him, but to humiliate him, the true mark of the savage. However, they needed his cooperation, and Fabrizio knew it. He was beyond help, but not helpless. He was alive. He could still choose, if only to choose the manner in which he would die. Consider the bravery, the nobility, the strength of that act. In his final moments, facing eternity, willfully discarding the shred of hope that maybe it would not happen, maybe he would get out of it alive, shouting defiance in the masked faces of his captors and denying the barbarous cowards intent on murdering him the satisfaction of his complicity in their crime.
Fabrizio Quattrocchi showed us how an Italian dies, and how a hero lives.
Militants in Iraq have killed abducted Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni, an Arabic TV channel said after obtaining video apparently showing the victim.
Reacting to news of the death on Thursday, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said: “There are no words to describe this inhuman act that with one blow wipes out centuries of civilisation to bring us back to the dark ages of barbarity.”
He added that Italy would remain faithful to its commitments in Iraq.
Mr Baldoni, 56, also worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross in Iraq. “He was trying to save human lives in Najaf by helping a Red Cross convoy in a spirit of solidarity which has always underscored his thinking and his actions,” his daughter, Gabriella, told Italian TV on Wednesday.[/color]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3635304.stm Italian women kidnapped in Iraq
Two Italian women working for a humanitarian group in Iraq have been kidnapped in Baghdad.
Pari and Torretta worked on a water and school project
