Wael Zuaiter

Janet Venn-Brown was Palestinian spokesperson Wael Zuaiter’s partner for eight years and one of the last people to see him before his assassination. Sarah Irving interviews for The Electronic Intifada.

Wael Zuaiter was the first victim in Europe in a series of assassinations of Palestinian artists, intellectuals and diplomats perpetrated by Israeli agents that was already underway in the Middle East. Zuaiter was gunned down by 12 bullets outside his apartment in Piazza Annibaliano, Rome on 16 October 1972. In 1979, Zuaiter’s companion of eight years, Sydney-born artist Janet Venn-Brown published For a Palestinian: A Memorial to Wael Zuaiter. Artist Emily Jacir writes how a chapter of the work which was to be made into a film became the point of departure for her project “Material for a film.”

On Monday, 16 October 1972, Wael Zuaiter left Janet Venn-Brown’s apartment and headed to his apartment at no. 4 Piazza Annibaliano in Rome. He had been reading One Thousand and One Nights on Janet’s couch, searching for references to use in an article he was planning to write that evening. He took two buses to get from Venn-Brown’s place to his in northern Rome. Just as he reached the elevator inside the entrance to the building of the apartment block where he lived, Israeli assassins fired 12 bullets into his head and chest with .22 caliber pistols at close range.