Vittorio Arrigoni

Vittorio Arrigoni (4 February 1975 – 15 April 2011) was an Italian journalist and activist.

Arrigoni was born in the town of Besana in Brianza, near Monza, on 4 February 1975.

He claimed that it was in his blood to fight for freedom as his grandfathers fought against the former fascist regime in Italy.

He had the Arabic word for resistance (muqawama) tattooed on his right arm.

Once he passed his high school exams in Italy, he left his hometown of Bulciago, a small village near Lake Como, and began working as a volunteer around the world (Eastern Europe, South America, Africa and Middle East).

In 2002, he visited Jerusalem which, according to his mother, was the "moment he understood his work would be concentrated there."

His mother, Egidia Beretta, is the mayor of Bulciago.

Arrigoni was credited as one of the many activists who revived the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian group that works in the Palestinian territories.

Arrigoni was the first foreign national to have been involved in such an incident in the Gaza Strip since the kidnapping of British journalist Alan Johnston in 2007.

He worked with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (ISM), through which he arrived in the Gaza Strip in 2008.

He maintained a website called Guerrilla Radio and also published a book about his experiences in Gaza City during the 2008–2009 Gaza War between Hamas and Israel.

In August 2008, he participated in the Free Gaza mission that aimed to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, in place since June 2007 when Hamas took power in the territory.

He was on the first boat that arrived in the Port of Gaza, describing that moment as "one of the happiest and most emotional of his lifetime."

While volunteering to act as a human shield for a Palestinian fisherman off Gaza's coast in September 2008, Arrigoni was injured by flying glass after the Israeli Navy used a water cannon to deter the vessel.

In November, he was arrested by Israeli authorities after again acting as a human shield for fishermen off Gaza's coast.

He returned to Gaza prior to the Israeli military offensive Operation Cast Lead, which lasted from December 2008 to January 2009.

Arrigoni was one of the few foreign journalists in Gaza during the war; he worked with Radio Popolare and as reporter for the Italian newspaper Il manifesto.

He later published a book, Restiamo umani (en: Gaza, Stay Human), a collection of his reportage from Gaza.

It is translated into English, Spanish, German, and French with a preface by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé.

Arrigoni was described as having a "fervent commitment to the Palestinian cause."

Arrigoni described four Palestinians who died in a tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border as "martyrs".

One of his last posts on Guerrilla Radio, which he wrote hours before he was kidnapped and killed, praised Palestinian efforts to smuggle goods into Gaza via tunnels as an "invisible battle for survival."

Arrigoni criticised Muslim extremists for trying to impose a hardline version of Islam in Gaza.

In an interview with the newspaper PeaceReporter, he said: "Personally, as an activist for human rights, I don't like Hamas at all. I have something to say to them too: they have deeply limited human rights since they have won the elections."

In his website, Guerrilla Radio, and Facebook page, Arrigoni described the government of Israel as one of the worst apartheid regimes in the world.

He said the Israeli blockade on Gaza was criminal and villainous.

In 2011, he was abducted and murdered by a group of Salafi jihadists.

The Hamas government, which identified the perpetrators as Palestinian and Jordanian affiliates of al-Qaeda, subsequently initiated a manhunt and arrested the accused suspects during a raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Arrigoni was kidnapped on 14 April 2011.

In a video posted on YouTube in which they identified themselves as belonging to a previously unknown group, "The Brigade of the Gallant Companion of The Prophet Mohammed bin Muslima," Arrigoni was blindfolded with blood seen around his right eye.

The captors demanded the release of their leader Walid al-Maqdasi, imprisoned by the de facto government in Gaza a month earlier, as a ransom and threatened Arrigoni's killing if a 30-hour deadline was not met.

The captors accused Arrigoni of "spreading corruption" and his home country Italy as an "infidel state."

For uncertain reasons, before the deadline expired, the captors killed Arrigoni in an empty apartment in the Mareh Amer area in northern Gaza.

A witness at the scene of his murder reported that he was likely either hanged or strangled.

After being led to the house by a member of the suspected Salafi group, Hamas security forces stormed the building and found Arrigoni's body.

An autopsy revealed that Arrigoni had been strangled with a plastic cord, but journalists were not allowed to see the body and no independent confirmation of the cause of death was possible.

Tawhid and Jihad denied responsibility for the killing, but stated it was "a natural outcome of the policy of the government carried out against the Salafi."

Iyad ash Shami, a leader of another Salafi group based in Gaza, denied involvement of Salafi militants and said the killing went against Islam.

Security forces in Gaza arrested four suspects in connection to the incident, and Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniya ordered an investigation by the Interior Ministry, and called Arrigoni's mother to send his condolences.

Hamas police initiated a manhunt for people involved in the murder.