The BBC profiles the Italian journalist who was held hostage in Iraq for a month -- and also killed by U.S. troops shortly after being released by her captors.

An excerpt:

Giuliana Sgrena: 'Voice of weakest'

Sgrena has tried to be the voice of the poor Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena never thought she would be taken hostage telling the story of the people she deeply cared for. A toughened war correspondent, her reports filter the impact of conflict through the lives of ordinary people - precisely what she was doing in Baghdad on 4 February when she was seized by gunmen. The former left-wing militant has often been described as an advocate of the dispossessed and the have-nots. For my whole life, I have fought and written on behalf of the weakest Giuliana Sgrena She once said war correspondents "make known the reality which otherwise would just be described in official war bulletins and propaganda pamphlets". And through the life-stories of individuals - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere - Sgrena built a long career that began long before she joined her current employers at the communist newspaper Il Manifesto in 1988.