The Hamas government, which identified the perpetrators as Palestinian and Jordanian affiliates of al-Qaeda, subsequently initiated a manhunt and arrested the accused suspects during a raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Once he passed his high school exams in Italy, he left his hometown of Bulciago, a small village near Lake Como,[4] and began working as a volunteer around the world (Eastern Europe, South America, Africa and Middle East).

[2] Arrigoni was credited as one of the many activists who revived the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian group that works in the Palestinian territories.

"[6] While volunteering to act as a human shield for a Palestinian fisherman off Gaza's coast in September 2008, Arrigoni was injured by flying glass after the Israeli Navy used a water cannon to deter the vessel.

Arrigoni was one of the few foreign journalists in Gaza during the war;[3] he worked with Radio Popolare[7] and as reporter for the Italian newspaper Il manifesto.

My hope is to see it replaced, without any bloodshed, with a democratic, secular and lay state – for example on the borders of historic Palestine – and where Palestinians and Israelis could live under equal rights of citizenship without ethnic and religious discrimination.

[2] One of his last posts on Guerrilla Radio, which he wrote hours before he was kidnapped and killed, praised Palestinian efforts to smuggle goods into Gaza via tunnels as an "invisible battle for survival.

In a video posted on YouTube in which they identified themselves as belonging to a previously unknown group, "The Brigade of the Gallant Companion of the Prophet Mohammed bin Muslima,"[11] Arrigoni was blindfolded with blood seen around his right eye.

[2][12] The captors demanded the release of their leader Hisham Al-Saedni (aka Abu al-Walid al-Maqdisi),[6] 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 Arrigoni's killing if a 30-hour deadline was not met.

"[13][14] For uncertain reasons, before the deadline expired, the captors killed Arrigoni in an empty apartment in the Mareh Amer area in northern Gaza.

[17] After being led to the house by a member of the suspected Salafi group, Hamas security forces stormed the building and found Arrigoni's body.

Hamas policemen entered the home and killed Balal al-Omari and a Jordanian, Abbad a-Rahman al-Brizat (one of the two dead men may have committed suicide).

Mahmoud al-Salfiti, 28, and Tamer al-Hasana, 27, were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor: the court refrained from imposing the death penalty on them after Arrigoni's parents urged that they be spared.

[32] The foreign ministry of Italy expressed "deep horror over the barbaric murder," calling it an "act of vile and senseless violence committed by extremists who are indifferent to the value of human life.

"[32] Although Arrigoni was killed by suspected members of the Palestinian Salafist group Jahafil Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad fi Filastin, some blamed Israel for the murder.

[34] Mahmoud al-Zahar, a member of the Hamas leadership, indirectly accused Israel of engineering the killing of Arrigoni in an attempt to scare off international activists from coming to Gaza.