The Italian hostage executed in Iraq tried to tear off his hood seconds before he was shot dead and screamed: "Now I'll show you how an Italian dies."
Details of the final moments of Fabrizio Quattrocchi deepened Italy's shock and outrage at the hostage crisis as it awaited further news of the three other men seized with him on Monday. The Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, yesterday hailed as a hero Mr Quattrocchi, 36, a former baker. The killers filmed the murder and Mr Frattini revealed details after Italy's ambassador to Qatar was shown the footage by the Arab television station Al-Jazeera, which has not broadcast the video.
| That's because it shows Quattrocchi was a man, and the creatures who killed him were animals. Bad for Arab morale, y'know. And for Andy Rooney's... |
"I have been authorised by the [victim's] family . . . to reveal the final words of this boy who died what I would call a courageous death, I would say like a hero," Mr Frattini said. "When his assassins were pointing a gun at him, this boy tried to remove the hood and shouted: 'Now I'll show you how an Italian dies.' And they killed him." Mr Quattrocchi's abductors shot him in the neck at close range. Al-Jazeera said that he had been forced to dig his own grave. Millions of Italians, including the victim's family in Genoa, learned of his death while watching a chat show on Wednesday night.
Relatives of the other hostages were in the audience. They had an agonising wait to discover which man had died after hearing that a hostage had been killed before the programme was aired. Although Mr Frattini was among the programme's guests, it was the show's host, Bruno Vespa, who made the announcement at midnight. Then Mr Frattini confirmed the grim news of Mr Quattrocchi's death. Francesco Cupertino, the brother of one of the other hostages, asked the foreign minister: "What will happen now?" Mr Frattini replied: "We have to work hard to bring them out." He said Italy would do "what is possible and impossible". But he underlined that it would not negotiate with the kidnappers, who call themselves the Green Brigade of the Prophet.
Mr Quattrocchi was born in Sicily and moved to Genoa with his family. He had become a bodyguard after doing a stint as a nightclub bouncer then signed up to work in Iraq. He was said to have accepted a job as a security guard working in Iraq for an American company, to earn enough for a home in Italy and to get married. "Fabrizio was a wonderful man, a man of iron but who had never hurt a fly," his fiancee, Alice, told Italian television yesterday. "He was supposed to come back to me and we were to be married. "The only consolation is that he died with honour."
| Not a concept his killers have quite grasped, despite the amount of time they spend yapping about it... |
But relatives of one of the other hostages, Salvatore Stefio, 34, reacted with despondency and despair. "He may have died a hero but he is still dead," said Mr Stefio's younger brother Christian. Mr Stefio's wife Emanuala, said: "With the murder of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, part of us has also died." Mr Stefio's father Angelo called on Italians to "take to the streets in order to stop all this". He appealed for the peacekeeping coalition to try to broker an exchange to secure the remaining hostages' release.
Al-Jazeera said a statement sent with the video had given a warning that three other Italians who were working for an American company and were kidnapped with Mr Quattrocchi near Fallujah would be killed "one by one". Most Italian politicians closed ranks around Silvio Berlusconi, the centre-Right prime minister, who has said he will not be bullied into withdrawing 3,000 Italian troops from Iraq. "They have cut short a life," Mr Berlusconi said. "They have not damaged our values and commitment to peace."
However, Mr Quattrocchi's family said he might have lived if Mr Berlusconi had not made "rash" comments after the kidnappings. "Before making declarations of force, the government would have done better to have opened talks with the kidnappers," the family said. "There is the feeling that the government wanted to make a show of strength by playing with the lives of those [Italians] in Iraq." Colleagues of Mr Quattrocchi said he had been captured while accompanying a group of clients on the road to Amman in Jordan. |