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

mercenary A mercenary is a private individual who joins an armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather t ...

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, o ...

and subsequently murdered by insurgents in the

Iraq War The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...

Hostage taking

Quattrocchi was taken hostage together with three fellow Italians, 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, which Italian prime minister

Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; 29 September 193612 June 2023) was an Italian Media proprietor, media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in three governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a mem ...

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, statesman and banker who was the President of Italy from 1999 to 2006 and the Prime Minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994. A World War II veteran, C ...

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 P ...

. 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 (28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until Saddam Hussein statue destruction, his overthrow in 2003 during the 2003 invasion of Ira ...

'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 (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, an Italian left-wing Extremists journalist who was also kidnapped in Iraq, complained that no similar honour had been awarded to

Nicola Calipari Nicola Calipari (June 23, 1953March 4, 2005) was an Italian major general and SISMI military intelligence officer. Calipari was accidentally killed in Iraq by American soldiers while escorting a recently released Italian hostage, journalist G ...

, an Italian intelligence agent killed by American friendly fire during the rescue of Giuliana Sgrena. Similarly, Sgrena remarked, neither was Enzo Baldoni, 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 and

Forza Italia (FI; ) was a centre-right liberal-conservative political party in Italy, with Christian democratic,Chiara Moroni, , Carocci, Rome 2008 liberalOreste Massari, ''I partiti politici nelle democrazie contempoiranee'', Laterza, Rome-Bari 2004 (esp ...

(

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

hero A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or Physical strength, strength. The original hero type of classical epics did such thin ...

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 imprisoned in Iraq Italian people murdered abroad Italian mercenaries Italian people taken hostage Italian terrorism victims Italian people executed abroad People from Catania Executed military personnel People murdered in Iraq Recipients of Italian civil awards and decorations Security guards killed in the line of duty Terrorism deaths in Iraq Italian military personnel killed in action Military personnel killed in action in the Iraq War People executed by firearm Mercenaries killed in action