Salim Lone, Vieira de Mello's spokesman in Iraq, told CNN that he had been with the U.N. diplomat two hours before he died.
"I grieve for him, I grieve for his family," Lone said. "I grieve most of all for people of Iraq." 1
In 1948, Sergio Vieira de Mello was born in
Rio de Janeiro and later in life would attend the
University of Paris to study
philosophy and
humanities. It was at this point that he joined the
United Nations, 1969 to be specific. vieira de Mello would spend the rest of his life working for the UN, mostly with
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Vieira de Mello would travel worldwide, mostly to countries that had recently come through a
civil war and help with the
refugees. His first tour of duty was in
Bangladesh in 1971 where he had great success in a rough and terrible situation. This pattern would continue through the rest of his career. Vieira de Mello was usually assigned the "worst" places to work and would help turn these around. Some success were with the refugees of the
Kosovo region, help clearing land mines in
Cambodia,
boat people in
Hong Kong and other locations.
In 2002, Vieira de Mello became the High Commissioner in 2002 following his work in East Timor. In East Timor Vieira de Mello served as UN Transitional Administrator. In May of 2003, he was asked by the Secretary-General to spend 4 months as Special Representative of the Seceretary-General. While he was working for the UN, Vieira de Mello was killed as a result of injuries sustatained on Tuesday, August 19th, 2003 when a truck bomb exploded beneath his office.
1. http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/08/19/sprj.irq.demello/
Other sources incldue http://www.unhchr.ch/html/hchr/cv.htm, http://www.rnw.nl/parceria/html/at030819obituario.html (translated by Google) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%e9rgio_Vieira_de_Mello