The Italian state broadcaster RAI on Monday broadcast part of a videotape showing the few seconds before the execution of an Italian taken hostage in Iraq in 2004.
The videotape, on which the kidnappers recorded the entire execution of bodyguard Fabrizio Quattrocchi, was obtained recently by Rome prosecutors investigating the Italian's death.
Prosecutors authorised the broadcast of the first part of the tape, before the actual moment of death.
In the section seen on national TV, Quattrocchi is shown wearing a blindfold and kneeling on the ground while a group of armed men stand around him. Apparently aware he is about to be shot, the hostage asks if he can remove the blindfold. When his request is refused, Quattrocchi says: "I'll show you how an Italian dies."
The defiant final words of the bodyguard were already known to Italians, many of whom hailed him as a hero as a result.
In the part of the video not broadcast, Quattrocchi's captors shoot him twice in the nape of the neck and he falls forwards. The images then show his killers turn him onto his left side, uncover his face and show it to the camera. The corpse is then raised by one of the assassins and put in a ditch which had been prepared in front of the hostage.
Quattrocchi, 35, had been working in Iraq for five months when he was abducted on April 12 along with three other Italians also working for a private security firm in the country.
He was killed two days later, while his colleagues were later released.
One of the first reactions to the broadcast came from Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini. "Those who said Fabrizio Quattrocchi was a mercenary should be ashamed. He died a hero," he said.
