Ilaria Alpi

Ilaria Alpi (24 May 1961 – 20 March 1994) was an Italian journalist murdered in Mogadishu, Somalia, together with her camera operator Miran Hrovatin. In 2009 Francesco Fonti, a former 'Ndrangheta member, claimed that Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman were murdered because they had seen toxic waste shipped by the 'Ndrangheta arrive in Bosaso, Somalia.

At the time of her murder, she was following a case of weapon and illegal toxic waste trafficking in which she believed the Italian Army and other institutions were also involved. Alpi was born in Rome and worked for Italian public television broadcaster RAI.

In the 2002 movie Ilaria Alpi - Il più crudele dei giorni, directed by Ferdinando Vincentini Ornagni, she is portrayed by Giovanna Mezzogiorno.

Biography

After graduating at the high school gymnasium "Titus Lucrezio Caro" of Rome, she graduated in literature after completing language courses and Islamic culture in the Department of Oriental Studies of the Sapienza University of Rome.

Thanks to her excellent knowledge of languages (Arabic, French, English), she won the first journalist writing from Cairo on behalf of Paese Sera and L'Unità. Later she won a scholarship to be taken to Rai.

She is buried in the Cemetery Flaminio in Rome.

Her mother, Luciana Riccardi Alpi (1933–2018), undertook, from the first trial, a battle to seek the truth and bring down all sorts of misdirections on the murder of the journalist and the cameraman.