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City pays tribute to slain journalist
11/24/2001By Associated Press
CATANIA, Sicily — Thousands of mourners packed the cathedral in this Sicilian city Saturday for the funeral of Maria Grazia Cutuli, an Italian journalist killed by gunmen in Afghanistan and remembered as a strong and brave person.
``She went as far as Afghanistan because she had the courage of a lion,'' said Erminda Franci, an elderly woman in the crowd of 5,000 at the funeral in Cutuli's hometown. ``We can't help but admire her strength and her spirit of sacrifice.''
Cutuli, 39, was shot to death Monday along with three other journalists who were ambushed on the road from Jalalabad to Kabul in eastern Afghanistan. She was covering the war for the Milan daily Corriere della Sera.
``You fell in a sacrificial trench,'' Archbishop Luigi Bommarito said in his homily. ``You wanted to see close up in order to write truthful things.''
Cutuli's brother, Mario, said Friday an autopsy had shown she had four gunshots in the back and an earlobe had been slashed off with a blade.
``Those wild beasts didn't have the courage to look you in the face, to look at your charming eyes,'' Bommarito said at the funeral.
Cutuli began her career in Sicily, writing for the newspaper La Sicilia. She quickly moved to nationwide publications, covering conflicts in Africa and elsewhere for the Italian weekly magazine Epoca. She joined Corriere della Sera in 1997 on its foreign news desk and later was sent abroad to cover breaking news.
Cutuli often used her vacation time to get to know places better for her work, including Rwanda, Israel and Sudan, colleagues recalled in tributes in the paper earlier in the week.
Italy's foreign ministry has ordered its diplomats abroad to press for any evidence that could help determine who killed the four journalists.
The area where they were ambushed recently came under the control of forces opposed to the Taliban, who retreated from most of Afghanistan this month under attack from opposing forces aided by U.S.-led airstrikes.
However, some Taliban stragglers and Arab fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden were still believed to be in the area, and there had been earlier reports of armed robberies on the road.