Fabrizio Quattrocchi (9 May 1968 – 14 April 2004) was an Italian security officer taken

hostage A hostage is a person seized by an abductor in order to compel another party, one which places a high value on the liberty, well-being and safety of the person seized, such as a relative, employer, law enforcement or government to act, or refr ...

and subsequently murdered by insurgents in the

Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...

Hostage taking

Quattrocchi was taken hostage together with Umberto Cupertino, Maurizio Agliana and Salvatore Stefio. They had been working in Iraq as security contractors under contract with DTS Security LLC, a security company incorporated in the U.S. state of Nevada, run by Paolo Simeone (a former Italian Marine and French Legionnaire) and an Italian lawyer, Valeria Castellani. 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 trying to pull off the hood and shouting "''Vi faccio vedere come muore un Italiano!''" - "I'll show you how an Italian dies!" He was then shot in the back of the neck. Cupertino, Agliana and Stefio would later be freed in a bloodless raid by U.S. troops, that Italian prime minister

Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; born 29 September 1936) is an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies f ...

said he had approved beforehand.

Honours

On 20 March 2006, Quattrocchi was posthumously honored by the Italian president

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (; 9 December 1920 – 16 September 2016) was an Italian politician and banker who was the prime minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994 and the president of Italy from 1999 to 2006. Biography Education Ciampi was born ...

with the Gold Medal for Civil Valour, after a proposal by the Home Secretary

Giuseppe Pisanu Giuseppe "Beppe" Pisanu (born 2 January 1937 in Ittiri, province of Sassari) is an Italian politician, longtime member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Christian Democracy (1972–1992) and then for Forza Italia (1994–2006). Biography Pi ...

. For the Gold Medal for Civil Valour to be awarded, a specific act of valor is required, and Quattrocchi's defiance towards his captors was judged deserving of the award.

Political implications

Quattrocchi's death became a highly divisive issue among the Italian public, which, despite widespread loathing of both

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...

's late regime and Islamist fundamentalism was mostly averse to participation in the Iraq war. The relatives of the victims of the

2003 Nasiriyah bombing The 2003 Nasiriyah bombing was a suicide attack on the Italian Carabinieri MSU headquarters in Nasiriyah, Iraq, south of Baghdad on 12 November 2003. The attack resulted in the deaths of 18 Italian servicemembers, mostly members of the MSU C ...

(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" ("Cross of Honour"), 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 an honour more than Quattrocchi.

Giuliana Sgrena Giuliana Sgrena (born 20 December 1948) is an Italian journalist who works for the Italian communist newspaper '' il manifesto'' and the German weekly ''Die Zeit''. While working in Iraq, she was kidnapped by insurgents on 4 February 2005. After ...

, 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 American friendly fire during the rescue of Giuliana Sgrena. Similarly, Sgrena remarked, neither was

Enzo Baldoni Enzo G. Baldoni (October 8, 1948 – August 26, 2004) was an Italian journalist working freelance and for the Italian news magazine ''Diario'' before being kidnapped and killed in captivity as captured on video by his captors. Baldoni was one of ...

, another Italian journalist kidnapped and killed in Iraq, awarded any honour. As the leftist side was not enthusiastic about the award, the rightist parties

Alleanza Nazionale National Alliance ( it, Alleanza Nazionale, AN) was a conservative political party in Italy.Luciano Bardi - Piero Ignazi - Oreste Massari, ''I partiti italiani'', Egea 2007, pp. 151, 173n. It was the successor of the Italian Social Movement (MS ...

and

Forza Italia Forza ItaliaThe name is not usually translated into English: ''forza'' is the second-person singular imperative of ''forzare'', in this case translating to "to compel" or "to press", and so means something like "Forward, Italy", "Come on, Ital ...

(

's movement at that time), insisted in their PR campaigns that Quattrocchi was a

hero A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. Like other formerly gender-specific terms (like ''actor''), ''her ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Quattrocchi, Fabrizio 1968 births 2004 deaths 2004 murders in Iraq 20th-century Italian people 21st-century Italian people Deaths by firearm in Iraq Foreign hostages in Iraq Italian people murdered abroad Italian people taken hostage Italian terrorism victims Male murder victims People from Catania People from Genoa People murdered in Iraq Recipients of Italian civil awards and decorations Security guards killed in the line of duty Terrorism deaths in Iraq