2004: Fabrizio Quattrocchi, “I’ll show you how an Italian dies!”

ExecutedToday.com ^ | April 14, 2008 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 2004, Italian mercenary Fabrizio Quattrocchi was executed by Iraqi insurgents.

A former Italian army corporal turned baker, Quattrocchi (English Wikipedia entry | the vastly more detailed Italian) hired on with an American contractor in the Iraq fiasco as a private security guard at €8,000 per month, intending to save enough to start a family.

Instead, Quattrocchi was seized as a hostage outside Baghdad with three comrades on April 13, 2004, by the “Green Brigades,” one of that era’s many ephemeral bodies of militants. The other three* were held (and eventually freed unharmed via a June 2004 special forces raid) further to an unsuccessful ultimatum demanding Italian withdrawal. Quattrocchi, by contrast, was executed the very next day after capture — seemingly to prove that the kidnappers meant business after Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi greeted news of the men’s capture with a vow that he would never give in to “blackmail.”

A video of the murder was delivered to Al Jazeera TV, which has never aired it in its entirety. However, it became known via second-hand reports of those who had viewed it, and eventually from a partial airing of the video, that just prior to being shot Quattrocchi spat defiant last words to his executioners:

[OKSooner]

God bless this guy. Suffice to say that the vast majority of us would not be quite as brave as he.

[glorgau]

I’d like to think that I’d be as brave, but you never know until the moment is upon you. Good on him.

[beef]

Now that’s a tough guy.

[Bigg Red]

I remember that story. Brave man.

[DCBryan1]

[DeFault User]

Brave man.

But how does a man end up with the name, “FourEyes”

Quattro=4 and Occhi=Eyes

[metmom]

It was that long ago already??????

[Irish Eyes]

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[DesertRhino]

He was murdered, not executed. Brave man.