12 Facts About Vittorio Arrigoni

Vittorio Arrigoni worked with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement, through which he arrived in the Gaza Strip in 2008.

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

Vittorio Arrigoni had the Arabic word for 'resistance' tattooed on his right arm.

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

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

Vittorio 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.

Vittorio Arrigoni later published a book, Restiamo umani, a collection of his reportage from Gaza.

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

Vittorio Arrigoni said the Israeli blockade on Gaza was criminal and villainous.

The captors demanded the release of their leader Hisham Al-Saedni, the head of the so-called Jahafil at-Tawhid wa al-Jihad fi Falastin, the local al-Qaeda branch in Gaza, who was imprisoned by the de facto government in Gaza on 2 March 2011, as a ransom and threatened Vittorio Arrigoni's killing if a 30-hour deadline was not met.

An autopsy revealed that Vittorio 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.

Vittorio Arrigoni said that "such an awful crime cannot take place without arrangements between all the parties concerned to keep the blockade imposed on Gaza".