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Ilaria Alpi

Ilaria Alpi

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WHO WAS SHE

Italian journalist (Rome 1961 – Mogadishu 1994). After studying Arabic at university and also thanks to her knowledge of other languages, she began her career as a correspondent from Cairo for the newspapers Paese Sera and L’Unità. She was subsequently hired by RAI, having won a scholarship, and started following the wars in Lebanon, Kuwait and Somalia for the RAI 3 news programme. In Somalia the journalist was killed in Mogadishu together with the operator M. Hrovatin, victims of an ambush specifically aimed at them. Alpi was investigating international arms trafficking and illegal toxic waste. The information collected, the outcome of the investigations and the real cause of the death of the journalist are not yet known and are covered by Official Secrets, although in 2014, twenty years after the murder, the procedure has begun for the release of the documents relating to the investigation. In memory of the affair and in memory of the journalist as a good example of investigative journalism, a Prize bearing his name has been established since 1995, awarded annually to the best investigative television dedicated to the theme of peace and solidarity.

(Source: Treccani Encyclopaedia)

READ HER STORY

  • Ilaria Alpi, after 26 years still no manager

THE SEARCH FOR THOSE RESPONSIBLE

(Update by Raffaella Della Morte and Marta Ramadori, 3 May 2020)

  • 1994 – The bodies of Ilaria and Miran were returned to Italy on March 22nd 1994. A state funeral was held for Ilaria in Rome but at the time of the burial an investigation had not yet been opened.. In Trieste, an autopsy was carried out on Miran’s body; in Rome, when the prosecutor’s office started the investigation, only an external medical examination was carried out on Ilaria’s body.
  • 1996 – The first full autopsy took in May 1996, when the Alpi’s body was exhumed. Meanwhile, on the site ilariaalpi.it, it states that “some of the video cassettes shot by Miran Hrovatin and some of Ilaria Alpi’s notebooks have disappeared. Only two notepads arrive in Rome and the luggage arrives with its seals broken. The ambassador removed the protocol sheet with its telephone numbers that was in Ilaria’s shirt pocket”. Ilaria’s father, Giorgio, began to talk about “execution” and remembered that shortly before his death, his daughter interviewed the Sultan of Bosaso, Abdullahi Mussa Bogor, and took notes in a notebook that has disappeared. In 1996 the sultan was included in the register of suspects but was later archived.
  • 1998 – Two years later the Somali citizen Omar Hashi Hassan, identified as a member of the commando group, was arrested for complicity in premeditated double murder.
  • 1999 – At the end of the trial, in July 1999, Hassan was acquitted by the Rome Assize Court “for not having committed the crime”. The prosecutor had asked for a life sentence.
  • 2000 – The following year the Court of Assizes of Appeal overturned the first degree sentence and sentenced to life imprisonment Hassan who was immediately handcuffed in the courtroom. Ilaria’s parents criticize the sentence saying that they want the real culprits and the instigators to be brought to justice.
  • 2001 – In 2001 the first criminal section of the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence for premeditated murder but annulled the sentence “limited to the aggravating circumstance of premeditation and the denial of general extenuating circumstances”.
  • 2002 – In 2002 the second appeal process begins, at the end of which Hassan was sentenced to 26 years in prison. For him complicity with unknown persons is hypothesized, so much so as to open a separate investigation.
  • 2003 – The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry is established, chaired by the lawyer Carlo Taormina.
  • 2006 – In February 2006 the Commission finished its work without reaching unanimous conclusions. Three reports were filed, one by the majority and two minority reports. Officially the Commission supports the hypothesis of an attempted robbery or kidnapping “which ended accidentally with the death of the victims”. The alternative version, on the other hand, suggests that Ilaria Alpi had discovered illegal arms and toxic waste trafficking in which the army and other Italian institutions were also involved. In the summer of the same year, Ilaria’s parents, Giorgio and Luciana, were received by Romano Prodi, Prime Minister, and by Fausto Bertinotti, Speaker of the Chamber.
  • 2007 – The Rome Prosecutor’s Office requests the dismissal of the separate investigation opened in 2002, after the conviction of Hassan.
  • 2010 – The request to set it aside was rejected. The investigating judge believed that the murder of Alpi and Hrovatin “was a commissioned murder, with the intent of silencing the two reporters and preventing their discoveries on the trafficking of weapons and waste from being disclosed”. Meanwhile, in the same year, the trial against Ali Ahnmed known as Gelle, the main accuser of Hassan, began. The accusation is slander in an attempt to divert the investigation.
  • 2014 – Meanwhile, the documents of the Commissions of Inquiry into waste and the Alpi case are declassified. The request had been made the previous year. The President of the Chamber is Laura Boldrini.
  • 2015 – Gelle, in the meantime fled abroad, makes a retraction and said he lied about Hassan.
  • 2016 – The Perugia Court of Appeal reopens the trial for Hassan. The attorney general and the civil parties, the state broadcaster RAI and Ilaria Alpi’s mother who embraces Hassan before the hearing, are all in agreement. In October of the same year, Hassan was acquitted after serving 17 years.
  • 2017 – In July 2017, the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office asked for the investigation to be closed, arguing that it was impossible to trace the motive and perpetrators of the murders and that there was no evidence of alleged misdirection. Immediately after this request of the Prosecutor’s Office, Ilaria’s mother whose physical state had been stressed declared that she had “to surrender to the incapacity of justice”. In June 2018, Ilaria’s mother fell asleep forever with obtaining justice for her daughter and Miran.
  • 2019 – In October 2019, the general prosecutor of Rome Andrea Fanelli rejected the request for setting it aside and arranged new investigations. The #noinonarchiviamo (no to setting it aside) movement, made up of FNSI, the RAI journalists union, Libera, Legambiente, TG3 and the Ilaria Alpi Foundation in the person of Mariangela Gritta Grainer, has appealed to the institutions to order the declassification of documents that are still secret and opposed setting aside the case.
  • 2020 – In recalling the 26th anniversary of the death of Ilaria and Miran, the President of the Chamber, Roberto Fico stated that the suspicions, misdirection, errors and omissions in the investigations were still too many and that the Chamber of Deputies has had for some time the procedures for declassifying documents acquired and created by the Commission of Inquiry. In the digital archive “Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin” – published on the institution’s website – both the documents already freely available and those so far declassified can be readily consulted due to the initiative of the Presidency of the Chamber.

RECOGNITION

  • 1995-2015 – The Ilaria Alpi Journalism Award is held every year in Riccione, dedicated to the memory of the journalist, promoted by the Ilaria Alpi Association. On the 21st November 2014, Luciana Riccardi, Ilaria’s mother, wrote a letter to the leaders of the association and the Ilaria Alpi Award in which, by resigning as a member, she asked to terminate the journalism award, adding that justice has not yet been done to the death of her daughter and “this commitment over the years has become particularly onerous, also for the bitterness I feel in noting that, despite our commitment, the judicial investigations have not brought any results “.
  • 1997 – The Gang dedicated the song Who killed Ilaria Alpi?contained in the album Out of control to Alpi, while in 2010 the Pooh wrote the song Reporter, a poignant ballad contained in the album Where the sun begins and dedicated it to Ilaria.
  • 2001 – The Ilaria Alpi.it website, an information observatory, was created with the aim of keeping her memory alive
  • 2007 – On the 15th November 2007, Ilaria Alpi and Milan Hrovatin were posthumously awarded the gold medal for civic merit.
  • 2009 – On February 2nd , the municipality of Parma inaugurated a library in the name of Ilaria Alpi whose father was originally from Compiano, a small village in the province of Parma.
  • 2011 – Spartaco Gippoliti and Giovanni Amori, Italian zoologists, mammal conservation experts, have dedicated the scientific name of a new species of mammal of the Bathyergidae family to Ilaria Alpi: Fukomys ilariae
  • The NGO Emergency named the surgical centre in Battambang, Cambodia, after her. Numerous streets were then named after her, as well as parks, schools, libraries and other public places
  • 2011 – In May, the Scientific High School of the municipality of Rutigliano in the province of Bari, on the occasion of its obtaining autonomy, was named after the journalist who tragically died.
  • 2012 – On the 26th April the municipality of Velletri in the province of Rome named a large city avenue after Ilaria Alpi in the presence of the deceased journalist’s mother and other family members.
  • In the album Sguardi, published in 2016 by the singer-songwriter Milo Brugnara, there is the song Ilaria, dedicated to Ilaria Alpi
  • 2016 – On the 13th June the comprehensive state institute of Montesarchio is named after her.
  • 2017 – At the end of April in Desenzano del Garda a municipal park of about 5,000 square meters (Parco Ilaria Alpi) was inaugurated in memory of Ilaria Alpi.
  • 2017 – On the 27th May in Cavernago the lower secondary school was named after Ilaria Alpi and her mother, Luciana Riccardi Alpi, met the students.
  • 2018 – On the 5th June the Comprehensive Institute of Botricello is named after Ilaria Alpi.
  • Ilaria Alpi’s name is included in the memorial in Bayeux (Normandy) dedicated to reporters who died carrying out their work, created on the initiative of the Municipality and Reporters sans Frontieres.
  • Ilaria Alpi’s name is included in the Journalist Memorial of the Newseum in Washington which contains the faces and names of journalists killed while doing their work.
  • At the Casa del Jazz in Rome, Alpi is remembered in the plaque at the entrance listing the Innocent Victims of the Mafia and in the memorial panel of Ossigeno.
  • She is also remembered in the Garden of Memory in Palermo.

BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS

  • VV., 1992 – 1994 Operazione Somalia, 1994.
  • Paolino Accolla, Ilaria Alpi. Il più crudele dei giorni,
  • Giorgio Alpi, Luciana Alpi, Mariangela Gritta Grainer, Maurizio Torrealta, L’esecuzione. Inchiesta sull’uccisione di Ilaria Alpi e Miran Hrovatin, 1999.
  • Gigliola Alvisi, Ilaria Alpi. L’eroina che voleva raccontare l’inferno, Milano, Rizzoli, 2014
  • Daniele Biacchessi, Passione Reporter, 2009
  • Barbara Carazzolo, Alberto Chiara, Luciano Scalettari, Ilaria Alpi. Un omicidio al crocevia dei traffici, 2002.
  • Fulvia Degli Innocenti, Il coraggio di Ilaria,ed Pratibianchi
  • Luigi Grimaldi, Luciano Scalettari,  L’anno che ha cambiato l’Italia. Dal caso Moby Prince agli omicidi di Mauro Rostagno e Ilaria Alpi. Una storia mai raccontata, 2010.
  • Luigi Grimaldi e Luciano Scalettari, Ilaria Alpi e Miran Hrovatin. Depistaggi e verità nascoste a 25 anni dalla morte., 2019, Round Robin
  • Mariangela Gritta Grainer, Ilaria Alpi. Una donna. La sua storia, 2005.
  • Francesco Ripoli, Marco Rizzo, Ilaria Alpi. Il prezzo della verità, 2007.
  • Roberto Scardova, Carte false. L’assassinio di Ilaria Alpi e Miran Hrovatin. Quindici anni senza verità, 2009.
  • UNCI, Giornata della memoria dei giornalisti uccisi da mafie e terrorismo, Roma, 2008.

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