Gaza City – 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.
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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.
this news put a smile on my face.
No, please. Don’t smile.
Vittorio was a very human person. He deeply criticized Israel’s attitude towards Palestinians, because he did believe in human rights. For all.
He never spoke a word of violence. This is a tragedy. He did not deserve anything like this.
Stay human (his motto)
the UN investigation report, written by Judge Goldstone foud israel responsible for the murder because they should have never left Gaza………
Punishment befiiting the crime of aiding terrorists.
The Israeli government, were it wise, would declare that G-d gave Israel to the Jewish people so we wouldn’t be considered thieves. This would save many lives.
We must wait for ‘Moshiach’ because the Israeli government lacks a lot.
He believed in human rights…for Palestinians. For Israelis and Jews, not so much.
He kept busy maligning and criticizing Israel, but never had a bad word to say about the murderers he adopted.
What a humanist! At best,He was an appeaser of murderers, at worst an enabler of murder.
Get cozy with killers, and they will eventually kill you!
Don’t think you can rehab these people, they’re not interested. You can sooner turn lead to gold, mr. alchemist.
This could be a beginning of a civil war between the terrorists.
Let them kill each other!
” (quote) 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.” “
Since when is murder by torture against the humanity, custom, and tradition of the Palestian people?
Sounds like Hamas, too, had a lot to gain from this guy being dead. He was not in favor of their repression and fundamentalism.
mida kneged mida b’guilui
All these humanists drek are nowhere to be seen or heard when there are real human rights violations going on; Chechnya, majority of Arab/Muslim world, China, Russia, to name a few. Incidentally, do J street and co have a special Yom Tov niggun for the ubiquitous slogan of “free free Palestine.” Bottom line, I would actually have some respect for these do gooders phonies, if they were consistent in their Quest for peace and justice. Interestingly, I have yet to see a protest demonstrating the human rights for Kurdish people, Coptic’s, and Sunni vs Shiite deaths. Only when killed by an Israeli soldier to these hypocrites rise up with such alacrity. Then comes their usual mantra, ” why can’t we criticize Israel without being accused of being called an anti-semite.” Gee..the million dollar question. I guess it’s hard not to be cynical, when these outright prevaricators/ hypocrites, protest under the banner of justice and freedom for all humanity. I suspect, the aforementioned oppressed groups might have a question, or two, that await answering. Let us use this time of z’man Charisanu by increasing our Achdus and in turn merit Hashem’s true messenger of justice.
No tears for this do-gooder turned victim? No weepiness for the wimpy distorter of justice and his bereaved Italian mama, who insists he was “but a humble man?” As #12 notes so accurately, Arrigoni and his ilk purposely ignored violence and terror directed at Israelis. While he and his club of cowards planned “creative” ways to undermine the security of Israeli men, women and children, the terrorist Hamas group grew emboldened day by day. When you advance the cause of one murderous group, you empower them all. So I guess he was a victim of his own success. Congratulations.
He believed in human rights…for Palestinians. For Israelis and Jews, not so much.
He kept busy maligning and criticizing Israel, but never had a bad word to say about the murderers he adopted.
What a humanist! At best,He was an appeaser of murderers, at worst an enabler of murder.
Get cozy with killers, and they will eventually kill you!
Don’t think you can rehab these people, they’re not interested. You can sooner turn lead to gold, mr. alchemist.