Hostage 'died like a hero'

He died, said Italy's foreign minister Franco Frattini, like a hero. With his captors pointing their guns at him, Fabrizio Quattrocchi groped for the hood strapped around his head and tried to rip it off. "I'll show you how an Italian dies," he screamed. Then they shot him.

He was the first hostage to die since the spate of abductions began last week: executed in cold blood, a bullet to the nape of the neck, in retribution, the "Green Brigades of the Prophet" declared in a statement, because "your Prime Minister says that the withdrawal of the Italian troops from Iraq is out of the question".

Al Jazeera declined to broadcast the video of Fabrizio's execution, describing it as "a very horrible death". So the last pictures of Quattrocchi were those broadcast by the same channel the previous day, when the Green Brigades put their prisoners on display.

It's not the way his family would choose to remember him: squatting awkwardly in a sweat-stained T-shirt, passport gripped in one hand, shoulders hunched, brow furrowed, face clouded with dire emotion, a cornered animal.

But Fabrizio Quattrocchi was happy to go to Baghdad: it was his big break. Like many working-class southern Italians, his family's story was a restless quest for a modicum of prosperity.

Fabrizio, 36, was born in Catania, Sicily, but when he was a child the family moved, like millions of others from the poor south, to the north, where the jobs were. They settled in the crowded quarter of San Martino in the centre of Genoa, where his father opened a bakery. In typical Italian fashion they all mucked in, Fabrizio and his brother Davide as well as their father and mother and sister Gabriella. Fabrizio used to get up at 3am to light the oven and get the first batch of bread away.

But baking bread was not his goal in life. All his spare time was spent in the local gym, pumping iron. He also obtained a black belt in taekwondo.

When his father died in 2000 they sold off the business and Fabrizio began to explore his options.

Strong and big, he became one of the local San Martino Rambos, working part-time as a bouncer in the local night clubs and as a bodyguard. When war broke out in Afghanistan, he volunteered to join the Italian Army to go there. He was turned down.

But then came the opportunity to work for a different sort of army. For two years he was on the books of an Italian agency called IBSA, providing bodyguards and detectives, and through them he was introduced to DTS Security, an American firm hiring bodyguards and security personnel to go to Iraq.

In this way Fabrizio became part of the shadowy, informal army in Iraq, numbering 20,000 according to some estimates, protecting the convoys that grind towards Baghdad.

"He was big and heavy but he never hurt a fly," said his girlfriend, Alice.

And the trip to Iraq was no daredevil gesture: it was meant to be his ticket to happiness. He would come back with a load of money, buy a little house in the country, get married, raise children, live in peace.

"He convinced himself that he had to go," said Alice, "because of the good prospects of making some money."

But wasn't he worried about the risks?

"Originally he thought he was only going to stay for a month, a month and a half," said the family. "In any case, in December the situation was not as bad as it is today. But then his mission got extended."

"He got in over his head," said his brother Davide, quietly.

He knew what he was talking about: by going to Iraq, Fabrizio was merely following his elder brother's example. "But," Davide added, "he showed he was up to it, thanks to his balance and rectitude.

"And with his last gesture he showed what he was made of. He didn't care to die like a dog."

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq