A Forgotten Hero
Published May 14, 2004
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 get married.
"The only consolation is that he died with honour."
But relatives of one of the other three hostages, Salvatore Stefio, 34, reacted with despondency and despair.
"He may have died a hero, but he's still dead," said Mr Stefio's younger brother Christian. "With the murder of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, part of us has also died," said Mr Stefio's wife Emanuala.
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 in Iraq to try to broker an exchange to secure the remaining hostages' release.
Al-Jazeera said a statement sent with the video had warned 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 Italy's centre-Right prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who has said he will not be bullied into withdrawing 3,000 Italian troops from Iraq. "They have cut short a life," said Mr Berlusconi. "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.
RJ Elliott is a graduate student studying Criminal Justice at the University Of Central Florida. His likes include nature, sports, and pierced blondes. He dislikes daytime television, left-wing dictators, and lead-tainted Chinese imports. He is ambivalent about Angelina Jolie.
- A Forgotten Hero
- Published: May 14, 2004
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- Section: Culture
- Writer: RJ Elliott
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Comments on this articleComments
i am curious as to the point of cutting and asting an entire news article from elsewhere. Also, don't you ened express permission of the publisher to do that? fair enough, provide some quotes from the original article, but at least re-write the story in your own words (possibly using more than one source), and preferably offer some opinion of your own.
last time i looked, Blogcritics wasn't a news site
Goodness gracious! Jim Carruthers, are you not special?! Let me get this straight. This man went to Iraq for work. You believe the Iraq war was unjustified. Somehow, his death was deserved? It was justified? He should not be mourned? The Italians should not see him as a hero as they should because he preferred to look his killers in the eye?
Is that what you feel? That is why you call him a mercenary? The War has happened. People will need to go in there to repair the infrastructure. If they die, it is justified? Or we should leave it for the Iraqis to sort out? At that point "wonderful peace loving people" such as yourself will have something else to moan about?
Unbelievable! You truly are special. The world must be a better place for having anti-war people like you that have no sympathy for the death of a human being who went to work because you disagreed with the War in question. Angels in heaven must be chanting your name. The world is a better place because you are in it....I just can't tell or see how, though. God save us from these types of peace loving people. Unbelievable!
That's what God does, keeps you blind!
hey:
i want angels in heaven chanting my name too.
jack e. jett
Smenkharon, with people like you inhabiting the earth what is there to see?! "A'int" missing shit! One might say I would rather be "blind" than see what it is you are seeing. Cos God knows, from your posts, what you are seeing? No evidence that you know any better than the believers and conclusive evidence that you are not a happy camper. Move towards the light:)
I am a very happy camper Sandra and your derision only enhances it!
Good for you darling. In that case, I am happy to have been of some help in turning that frown upside down.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/15681)
And the murder of a mercenary is relevant how, you cack-handed mini-goebbels?
Mercenaries going to a war-zone which is deteriorating is a balance-sheet of risk assessment. Not heroism.
I can't wait for the story of "we had to destroy the village to save the village".