Fabrizio Quattrocchi

Fabrizio Quattrocchi (9 May 1968 - 14 April 2004) was an Italian security officer taken hostage by Islamist militants in Iraq, notable for his defiance of captors shortly before being killed. He was born in Catania, Sicily but grew up in Genoa.

Hostage taking

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 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 said he had approved beforehand, just before an important election in Italy which was a defeat for his party.

DSSA link

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...
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