The Italian Member of Parliament Matteo Mecacci, Chairman of the General Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and Ambassador of Italy to Georgia Federica Favi will commemorate today in Tbilisi the Italian journalist Antonio Russo, which was murdered in Georgia on 16 October 2000.
Russo, aged 40, was working at that time as a foreign correspondent for the Italian station Radio Radicale, covering the Second Chechen War. He was found dead by the side of a mountain road near the village of Ujarma, some 40 kilometers east of Tbilisi. In his career Russo had previously covered conflicts in Algeria, Burundi, Rwanda, Colombia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He was the only foreign correspondent to remain in Kosovo during NATO bombing in 1999.
To honour his memory Mr Mecacci, which is paying a three-day visit to Georgia, and Ambassador Favi will pay a visit at 14:30 to 7 Nikoladze street, at the house where Russo last lived before disappearing.
Journalists are kindly invited to the ceremony.
For more information, write to primosegretario.tbilisi@esteri.it
