Vittorio Arrigoni after Juliano Mer-Khamis, this is just too much. May they both rest in peace.

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A message from Mary Hughes Thompson, one of the activists on board the first boat into Gaza,. Vik was on that boat, and we are all devastated with this news.
Greta

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Message from Mary Hughes Thompson.

Throughout the day we prayed this would have the best kind of endings. The kidnappers had given a deadline several hours away.

So this latest terrible news has devastated all of us who knew Vik.

He and I were on the FREE GAZA when it sailed to Gaza in August 2008.

He stayed behind in Gaza, and two months later he was kidnapped and arrested on a fishing boat near the coast of Gaza.

He was abducted to Israel, jailed in Ramle Prison and deported home to Italy.

Within days he was back in Gaza, where he stayed throughout the massacres of December 08 and January 09, leaving only briefly for Cairo where I last saw him during the Gaza Freedom March.

Words can’t express the shock and sense of bereavement at the loss of this beautiful man, who considered himself Palestinian. The videos we saw of him bloodied and blindfolded were chilling, nothing like the Vittorio we knew and loved, always smiling, always wearing a skipper’s hat and holding his beloved pipe.

After Juliano Mer-Khamis, this is just too much. May they both rest in peace.