According to a March 15 NY Times obituary:

Giandomenico Picco, an Italian diplomat who as a lead negotiator for the United Nations helped resolve conflicts across the globe most notably spending nearly a year in the early 1990s shuttling around the Middle East to secure the release of 11 hostages held by terrorist groups in Lebanon died on Sunday in Wilton, Conn., in Fairfield County. He was 75….

… Tall, sharply dressed and always discreet, Mr. Picco was something of a mystery within the U.N. bureaucracy. He would disappear without notice from the headquarters in Manhattan, only to surface a few days later in Lebanon, Iran or Afghanistan, often without having passed through border controls along the way….

Click here for the full obituary of Mr Picco.

Mr Picco and his family were residents of the Roosevelt Island Rivercross building in the 1980’s – not sure of the exact dates.

Here’s Mr Picco discussing his work negotiating release of hostages from Hezbollah.

Giandomenico Picco interview from Ten 8 Films on Vimeo.

Mr Picco talked about his career in diplomacy:
… I did not do diplomacy in the desk. I did not do diplomacy on the great halls of the UN. I actually did diplomacy with results not with the blah blah and not with the piece of paper. In the real theater of life.

I took home eight American hostages, which had been kept there the longest one for five years, three British hostages and two German hostages. In the meantime and during this operation, I was myself taken four times, blindfolded, locked up in the back of the car and eventually talked so much that they’ve let me go because they couldn’t take it anymore…

Condolences to Mr Picco’s family, friends and colleagues.

Roosevelt Islander