Fabrizio Quattrocchi
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Fabrizio Quattrocchi (c. 1968 – April 14, 2004) was an Italian security guard taken hostage by Islamist militants in Iraq, notable for his defiance of captors shortly before being killed.
He was taken hostage together with Umberto Cupertino, Maurizio Agliana and Salvatore Stefio. They worked in Iraq as security contractors.
Quattrocchi's kidnappers forced him to dig his own grave and kneel beside it wearing a hood as they prepared to film his death, but he defied them by pulling off the hood and shouting "Adesso (or ora) vi faccio vedere come muore un italiano!" -- "Now I will show you how an Italian dies!" He was then shot in the back of the neck.
The Arabic television station Al Jazeera refused to show the videotape of his death, saying it was "too gruesome". Many commentators have celebrated Quattrocchi's defiance and suggested that he ruined the propaganda value of the video by refusing to submit to his captors.
Cupertino, Agliana and Stefio would later be freed in a bloodless raid by US troops, that former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said he had approved beforehand, just before an important election in Italy which was, however, a heavy defeat for his party.
The Italian Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies (DSSA), an organization accused of establishing a clandestine network for influencing politics with illegal methods – possibly including kidnapping and murder, claimed that Quattrocchi was operating in Iraq on its behalf. Quattrocchi's DSSA association was subsequently denied and the assertion is thought to be false because he was actually working for a US-based security company.
On March 20, 2006, Quattrocchi was posthumously honored by the Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi with the Gold Medal for Civil Valor, after a proposal by the Inner Affairs minister Giuseppe Pisanu.
Quattrocchi's death has been a highly divisive issue among the Italian public, which, despite widespread loathing of both Saddam Hussein's late regime and Islamist fundamentalism, is mostly averse to participation in the Iraqi war. Most Italians do approve the bravery and pride he could muster when put to death.
The Left, though praising Quattrocchi's personal courage and dignity, did not believe that giving him the Gold Medal was justified. They claimed that he and other security personnel and contractors in Iraq are essentially "mercenaries". Another source of controversy is the fact that other Italian victims of the Iraq war were not awarded similar honours. The relatives of the victims of the Nasiriyah attack of November 2003 (in which 17 Italian servicemen and two Italian civilians were killed by a truck bomb) complained that while Quattrocchi was awarded the Gold Medal, those Italian soldiers were awarded with the "Croce d'Onore" "Honour Cross", as posthumous honour, even though they were in service as regular soldiers, unlike Quattrocchi. For this reason, according to them, the victims of the Nasiriyah attack deserved such a honour more than Quattrocchi. Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian left-wing journalist who was also kidnapped in Iraq, complained that no similar honour had been awarded to Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent killed by USA friendly fire during her rescue in a rather controversial episode. Similarly, Sgrena remarked, neither Enzo Baldoni, another Italian journalist kidnapped and killed in Iraq, was awarded any honour for his death. But for the Gold Medal for Civil Valor is necessary one act of specific Valor, as the "Adesso (or ora) vi faccio vedere come muore un italiano!" -- "Now I will show you how an Italian dies!" The Medal referred to this courage.
On the contrary, the rightist parties Alleanza Nazionale and Forza Italia (Silvio Berlusconi's movement), insist in their PR campaigns that Quattrocchi was a hero. They blame the Left for being "unpatriotic."
[edit] External links
- Quattrocchi officially remembered with Gold Medal for Civil Value
- Italian hostage hoped to start family
- Tribute in Italian to Fabrizio Quattrocchi
- BBC news report on Fabrizio Quattrocchi's death
- Commentator James S. Robbins discusses Fabrizio Quattrocchi's death at the National Review
- Site in memory of Quattrocchiin Italian language.
