Italy horrified at execution of journalist

Italy reacted with horror today at the killing of an Italian journalist in Iraq, while the Italian government insisted it would stay the course in the war-torn Middle Eastern country.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the killing of freelance journalist Enzo Baldoni was “an act of barbarity, a horrendous act that has struck a courageous journalist who had gone to Iraq to help the Iraqi people”.

But Frattini echoed Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s assertion that Italy would maintain its troop presence in Iraq despite Baldoni’s killing.

“The Italian undertaking in Iraq cannot and should not change,” Frattini said.

The Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera reported last night that it had received a video that appeared to show the hostage’s killing, but the station declined to broadcast the footage out of sensitivity to its viewers.

“There are no words to describe this inhuman act that with one blow wipes out centuries of civilisation to bring us back to the dark ages of barbarity,” Berlusconi said in a statement issued in Rome shortly after the report aired.

In a front page article Italy’s top daily Corriere della Sera said: “Among the many horrors of the Iraq war, the massacre of Enzo Baldoni is for us a tragic, incomprehensible, Italian bereavement.”

Berlusconi’s decision to back US President George Bush in Iraq defied public opinion. Before the conflict began, a million people marched through the streets of Rome against the war – one of Europe’s biggest anti-war demonstrations.

Although Italian troops did not fight in the war, they were sent in after the ousting of Saddam Hussein to help rebuild the country. At 3,000, they are the third-largest contingent in Iraq.

Baldoni had gone missing last week. He was shown apparently in the hands of extremists in Iraq on video footage broadcast on Tuesday by Al-Jazeera.

In the video, a militant group calling itself “The Islamic Army in Iraq” did not threaten Baldoni directly, but said in a statement it could not guarantee his safety unless Italy announced within 48 hours that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq, according to Al-Jazeera.