Vittorio Arrigo, kidnapped activist, found dead in Gaza
gimmesometruth27
St. Fuckin Louis Posts: 23,303
not sure if anyone heard about this, but it is definitely sad news...
i guess this is unfortunately what happens sometimes to people who dedicate their lives to trying to make a difference. the world can be such a terrible place sometimes.
Kidnapped Italian activist found dead in Gaza
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110415/ap_ ... ans_kidnap
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The body of an Italian activist was found hanged in a Gaza apartment just hours after he was abducted by an al-Qaida-inspired group, Hamas said early Friday, in the first kidnapping of a foreigner since the militant Hamas overran the coastal strip nearly four years ago.
Hamas officials said police stormed an apartment in Gaza City where Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was being held by members of a small Islamic group that had kidnapped him on Thursday. Arrigoni was dead and the apartment was otherwise empty, the officials said.
In Rome, the Italian Foreign Ministry said the killing was a "barbaric murder" and a "vile and irrational gesture of violence on the part of extremists indifferent to the value of a human life."
The Islamic group, calling itself Monotheism and Holy War, had released a video on Thursday showing the kidnapped activist blindfolded and with cuts on his face, held in front of the camera by a fist gripping his hair. The group demanded that Hamas free its leader and two other jailed members and said it would execute the captive if the demand was not met.
Despite the video, the group released a statement on Friday denying it was responsible for Arrigoni's death.
The abduction highlighted challenges that Hamas — an Iran-backed group with a militant Islamist ideology, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and Israel — has faced from smaller Islamic factions in Gaza who see Hamas as too pragmatic and lenient. Some of these, including the one apparently behind Arrigoni's abduction, are inspired by al-Qaida and the world jihad movement.
Arrigoni came to Gaza as a pro-Palestinian activist in 2008. According to a press release from his organization, the International Solidarity Movement, he had been "monitoring human rights violations by Israel, supporting the Palestinian popular resistance against the Israeli occupation and disseminating information about the situation in Gaza to his home country of Italy."
Kidnappings of foreigners in Gaza took place with some regularity before Hamas took control of the territory in 2007. All were eventually released unharmed. There had been no abductions since Hamas took power.
One of the leaders of the International Solidarity Movement, Huweida Arraf, condemned Arrigoni's "senseless killing."
"Vittorio was really loved in Gaza," she said. I didn't think there was even a 1 percent chance they would kill him. It was a complete shock." The ISM has no immediate plans to pull its volunteers out of Gaza, she said.
Hamas said two people were arrested in another location in connection with the killing, and a third was being sought.
In a statement, the Hamas Interior Ministry said Arrigoni's captors killed him shortly after he was abducted midday Thursday. Salama Marouf, a Hamas government spokesman, said the killing was an act "against the humanity and against the custom and tradition of the Palestinian people."
Later Friday, Hamas held a rally to honor Arrigoni. About 2,000 people attended.
A Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, said Arrigoni and other foreign activists were "our friends" and promised that the perpetrators would be punished. He also indirectly accused Israel of engineering the killing to intimidate foreign activists seeking to sail to Gaza to protest a naval blockade imposed on the territory.
"Such an awful crime cannot take place without arrangements between all the parties concerned to keep the blockade imposed on Gaza," Zahar said.
Al-Qaida-inspired groups like the one that appeared to be behind Arrigoni's killing have clashed with Hamas in the past. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a report last month that the groups follow a "strict interpretation of Islamic law and see themselves not as liberators of Palestine but as part of a global movement of armed fighters defending Muslims against non-Muslim enemies."
Hamas' relations with the jihadi groups, according to the same report, have "shifted from cooperation to antagonism."
Hamas' rivals from the Western-backed Palestinian government in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority, condemned the killing. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called Arrigoni's death a "despicable and ugly crime."
Journalists were not allowed to see the body in the morgue and could not independently confirm the cause of death given by Hamas. An Italian doctor was on his way from Israel to examine the body, a Hamas official said.
Arrigoni was a well-known figure in Gaza, frequently clenching a pipe between his teeth and wearing a beret emblazoned with a likeness of Che Guevara, as well as bracelets in the red, black, green and white colors of the Palestinian flag.
He was an outspoken critic of Israel, but in an interview with The Associated Press in 2008 he also criticized Muslim extremists for trying to impose a hardline version of Islam in Gaza. He said he hoped the presence of Western volunteers like him would help liberalize Gazan society.
Egidia Beretta, Arrigoni's mother who is the mayor of Bulciago, a small town in northern Italy, spoke to Italian television Sky 24 about her son's humility.
"He never hung out with the powerful, he never went to the 'palaces,' if that's what you can call those (headquarters) of Hamas," Beretta said. "He had two rooms in this apartment house that overlooked the port."
Arrigoni's organization, the International Solidarity Movement, operates in the West Bank and Gaza. Its volunteers protest against Israel and interfere with the operations of the Israeli military.
In 2003, an American ISM activist, Rachel Corrie, was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in a combat zone in southern Gaza while trying to block its path. A British activist with the group was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier in the same area that year. A third ISM activist, a Palestinian, was shot and killed by Palestinian militants in the West Bank town of Jenin in 2007.
Gaza militants still hold captive an Israeli soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who was abducted in a cross-border raid in 2006.
Hamas is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including many convicted of murdering Israeli civilians, in exchange for Schalit. Hamas have banned the Red Cross from seeing Schalit and little is known about his condition.
i guess this is unfortunately what happens sometimes to people who dedicate their lives to trying to make a difference. the world can be such a terrible place sometimes.
Kidnapped Italian activist found dead in Gaza
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110415/ap_ ... ans_kidnap
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The body of an Italian activist was found hanged in a Gaza apartment just hours after he was abducted by an al-Qaida-inspired group, Hamas said early Friday, in the first kidnapping of a foreigner since the militant Hamas overran the coastal strip nearly four years ago.
Hamas officials said police stormed an apartment in Gaza City where Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was being held by members of a small Islamic group that had kidnapped him on Thursday. Arrigoni was dead and the apartment was otherwise empty, the officials said.
In Rome, the Italian Foreign Ministry said the killing was a "barbaric murder" and a "vile and irrational gesture of violence on the part of extremists indifferent to the value of a human life."
The Islamic group, calling itself Monotheism and Holy War, had released a video on Thursday showing the kidnapped activist blindfolded and with cuts on his face, held in front of the camera by a fist gripping his hair. The group demanded that Hamas free its leader and two other jailed members and said it would execute the captive if the demand was not met.
Despite the video, the group released a statement on Friday denying it was responsible for Arrigoni's death.
The abduction highlighted challenges that Hamas — an Iran-backed group with a militant Islamist ideology, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and Israel — has faced from smaller Islamic factions in Gaza who see Hamas as too pragmatic and lenient. Some of these, including the one apparently behind Arrigoni's abduction, are inspired by al-Qaida and the world jihad movement.
Arrigoni came to Gaza as a pro-Palestinian activist in 2008. According to a press release from his organization, the International Solidarity Movement, he had been "monitoring human rights violations by Israel, supporting the Palestinian popular resistance against the Israeli occupation and disseminating information about the situation in Gaza to his home country of Italy."
Kidnappings of foreigners in Gaza took place with some regularity before Hamas took control of the territory in 2007. All were eventually released unharmed. There had been no abductions since Hamas took power.
One of the leaders of the International Solidarity Movement, Huweida Arraf, condemned Arrigoni's "senseless killing."
"Vittorio was really loved in Gaza," she said. I didn't think there was even a 1 percent chance they would kill him. It was a complete shock." The ISM has no immediate plans to pull its volunteers out of Gaza, she said.
Hamas said two people were arrested in another location in connection with the killing, and a third was being sought.
In a statement, the Hamas Interior Ministry said Arrigoni's captors killed him shortly after he was abducted midday Thursday. Salama Marouf, a Hamas government spokesman, said the killing was an act "against the humanity and against the custom and tradition of the Palestinian people."
Later Friday, Hamas held a rally to honor Arrigoni. About 2,000 people attended.
A Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, said Arrigoni and other foreign activists were "our friends" and promised that the perpetrators would be punished. He also indirectly accused Israel of engineering the killing to intimidate foreign activists seeking to sail to Gaza to protest a naval blockade imposed on the territory.
"Such an awful crime cannot take place without arrangements between all the parties concerned to keep the blockade imposed on Gaza," Zahar said.
Al-Qaida-inspired groups like the one that appeared to be behind Arrigoni's killing have clashed with Hamas in the past. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a report last month that the groups follow a "strict interpretation of Islamic law and see themselves not as liberators of Palestine but as part of a global movement of armed fighters defending Muslims against non-Muslim enemies."
Hamas' relations with the jihadi groups, according to the same report, have "shifted from cooperation to antagonism."
Hamas' rivals from the Western-backed Palestinian government in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority, condemned the killing. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, called Arrigoni's death a "despicable and ugly crime."
Journalists were not allowed to see the body in the morgue and could not independently confirm the cause of death given by Hamas. An Italian doctor was on his way from Israel to examine the body, a Hamas official said.
Arrigoni was a well-known figure in Gaza, frequently clenching a pipe between his teeth and wearing a beret emblazoned with a likeness of Che Guevara, as well as bracelets in the red, black, green and white colors of the Palestinian flag.
He was an outspoken critic of Israel, but in an interview with The Associated Press in 2008 he also criticized Muslim extremists for trying to impose a hardline version of Islam in Gaza. He said he hoped the presence of Western volunteers like him would help liberalize Gazan society.
Egidia Beretta, Arrigoni's mother who is the mayor of Bulciago, a small town in northern Italy, spoke to Italian television Sky 24 about her son's humility.
"He never hung out with the powerful, he never went to the 'palaces,' if that's what you can call those (headquarters) of Hamas," Beretta said. "He had two rooms in this apartment house that overlooked the port."
Arrigoni's organization, the International Solidarity Movement, operates in the West Bank and Gaza. Its volunteers protest against Israel and interfere with the operations of the Israeli military.
In 2003, an American ISM activist, Rachel Corrie, was crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer in a combat zone in southern Gaza while trying to block its path. A British activist with the group was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier in the same area that year. A third ISM activist, a Palestinian, was shot and killed by Palestinian militants in the West Bank town of Jenin in 2007.
Gaza militants still hold captive an Israeli soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who was abducted in a cross-border raid in 2006.
Hamas is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including many convicted of murdering Israeli civilians, in exchange for Schalit. Hamas have banned the Red Cross from seeing Schalit and little is known about his condition.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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Suspect in Italian's death in Gaza commits suicide
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110419/ap_ ... n_activist
NUSSEIRAT, Gaza Strip – An al-Qaida inspired militant implicated in the death of an Italian activist killed himself and an associate as Hamas security forces stormed his Gaza hideout on Tuesday.
The surviving member of the militant trio believed to have kidnapped and killed pro-Palestinian activist Vittorio Arrigoni was arrested by Hamas forces who surrounded and captured the house after a fierce firefight, said Hamas security spokesman Ihab Ghussein.
As Hamas forces closed in, the group's ringleader, Abdel-Rahman Mohammad Breizat, a Jordanian, threw grenades at his two accomplices and then shot himself rather than be taken alive.
Hamas forces had surrounded the hideout earlier in the day as part of a manhunt for the killers of Arrigoni — an activist living in Gaza since 2008 helping local Palestinians. The 36-year-old's body was found on Friday, a day after he was kidnapped and after a video showing him beaten and blindfolded surfaced online.
Three members of the Hamas police force were wounded in the gunfight along with a girl, caught in the crossfire as she tried to flee to her house nearby.
Several relatives of the gunmen as well as a known Salafist preacher arrived at the scene to plead with the suspects to surrender. After a few hours, Hamas said mediation attempts collapsed and shooting erupted anew. Hamas then banned media from reporting and ordered them away from the scene.
In the video of Arrigoni, a group identifying itself as "Monotheism and Holy War" demanded the release of two of its leaders, held by Hamas, in exchange for the hostage.
Hamas said Arrigoni was strangled, but it has not allowed an independent expert to see the body.
The case was the first kidnap-slaying of a foreigner in the Gaza Strip since Hamas took power in the tiny Mediterranean coastal territory in 2007. It highlighted the challenge that the Iran-backed Hamas — a group with a militant Islamist ideology that is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and others — faces from smaller more extremist factions in Gaza that see it as too pragmatic.
A Hamas official said the suspects were members of a small extremist Islamic group inspired by al-Qaida. Breizat is believed to have sneaked into Gaza last year.
Breizat's mother earlier told The Associated Press from Amman, Jordan, that her son was an observant Muslim unfairly accused of links to militant groups in his native country. She said he had "disappeared suddenly" but the family later heard from him that he went to Gaza.
"He's not a terrorist," said Umm Maath, identifying herself by her eldest son's name.
Arrigoni was given a symbolic funeral on Monday in Gaza, after which his body was taken to neighboring Egypt, and then to Italy for burial.
Radical and ultraconservative Islamic groups in Gaza that belong to the ultraconservative Salafi sect have created a headache for the strip's militant Hamas rulers. Some groups are suspected of being behind a series of bombings of Internet cafes and music stores in Gaza, which they view as contrary to their perception of strict Islamic values.
In 2007, Salafi militants from the "Army of Islam" kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston and held him for a few months before he was freed.
The same group was involved in the abduction of Israeli soldier Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who was captured in a cross-border raid in 2006.
Hamas still holds Schalit, demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including many convicted of murdering Israeli civilians, in exchange for his freedom. Hamas have banned the Red Cross from seeing Schalit and little is known about his condition.
___
Associated Press writer Ian Deitch in Jerusalem and Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan contributed to this report.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Why am I surprised they would some how blame Israel.....
so out of this entire thread that is the lesson you take home???
have you forgotten the flotilla incident from last year where the IDF attacked those ships in international waters??????? with the egg on israel's face after that incident do you really think israel would want another flotilla to come their way to try to pass the blockade? do you think that israel might maybe possibly try to intimidate foreigners from getting involved in breaking the blockade? of course they would. any country would do the same.... why do you think it is so difficult for ANY activists for either side to get into the west bank?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
but this incident in this thread does not appear or suggest israeli involvement so i doubt that they were involved at any point.
what is interesting to me is that a militant muslim group murdered someone working on behalf of the palestinians in gaza. why would they have done something like that?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
hamas is the security force in gaza ... these guys are causing trouble ... they are arresting them ... they don't like being arrested ...
TWO suspects in the murder of an Italian pro-Palestinian activist in Gaza were killed yesterday and a third captured when Hamas security men stormed a house in a Gaza refugee camp.
One of the suspects, a Jordanian named Abdel Rahman al-Braizat, shot himself in the head after throwing a grenade at his two accomplices, killing one and wounding the other, Hamas said.
The three are believed responsible for the murder last week of Vittorio Arrigoni, whom they had seized and offered to exchange for the group's leader, Hisham al-Saidini, who has been in Hamas custody since January. Security officials said they killed Arrigoni long before the deadline expired.
The three had barricaded themselves in a building in the Nuseirat refugee camp and refused to surrender. Saidini was brought to the scene in an attempt to persuade the men to give themselves up. Instead, they fired at the security men, wounding several.
Hamas had previously arrested several other suspects in Arrigoni's killing and closed off Gaza's border crossings to prevent the killers from escaping. Photographs and names of the three wanted men were published on the website of Hamas's Interior Ministry and Hamas offered a reward to anyone offering information leading to their arrest.
The organisation to which the men belonged, Tawheed wah-Jihad, is one of several radical Salafi groups inspired by al-Qa'ida operating in Gaza and drawing recruits, sometimes from Hamas.
In a raid on a Salafi-run mosque two years ago by Hamas forces, 24 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. That, however, succeeded only in suppressing the radical groups for a while. The Salafists wish to impose an extreme form of Islam in Gaza and do not accept a ceasefire with Israel, which Hamas endorses.
By continuing to fire rockets into Israel, they have drawn Israeli strikes, aimed mostly at Hamas since Israel holds it responsible as the ruling regime in Gaza.
Hamas officials said the operation should serve as a warning to anyone trying to destabilise Gaza.
The clash with the Salafists points up tensions within Hamas itself between those who regard it primarily as an Islamic grouping and those who see it in nationalist terms. While the latter wish to mend the break with the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and to find at least a temporary accommodation with Israel, the others are focused on establishing a state under sharia law.
Because Hamas are Murderers!
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Are you refering to Israeli forces that acted in self-defense against a premeditated attack by a group of hardcore IHH activists that had weapons...I don't think they had anything in mind than to start trouble.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
i wonder which country/state/organization is responsible for the most civilian deaths in the last decade? :roll:
let me connect the dots like glenn beck....glenn beck is a moron, people watch his show, so All of the people that watch him must be morons too....
i am sure there are some very intelligent people who watch beck, maybe for comedic value? just like i am sure that not all in hamas are disciples of obl and aq....
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Quit the spin....
Did you not see the word RADICAL?
you called "hamas" "al qaeda radicals" and said they are murderers. they are separate entities, and it is well agreed upon that al-qaeda is by definition radicals....
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
To ALL
His Name was Vittorio Arrigoni and He was A True Winner ! I live 2km from his hometown and Sunday afternoon I'll be walking with him to the cemitery ! RIP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKSAC1XVj1Y
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://www.youtube.com/user/1worldcitiz ... Q0abc8GQKo
Eddie, why don't you send some boards ?!?!
Enjoy !
Rickyvox