Italy wants US Hostage shooters put on trial

[eek.]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>Italy agent death row intensifies

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Calipari has become a national hero in Italy

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->Italy's foreign minister has demanded the US "identify and punish" those responsible for the death of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq.

Gianfranco Fini said Rome and Washington had "different" versions of what happened to Nicola Calipari.

Calipari died under US fire as he escorted a released hostage, reporter Giuliana Sgrena, to freedom.

The US says shots were fired because the vehicle was speeding and did not heed troops' warnings for it to stop.

But Mr Fini said Calipari had made "all the necessary contacts" with the US authorities before making the journey.

The car was travelling at no more than 40 km per hour, he added.

Calipari has become a national hero in Italy, and thousands attended his funeral on Monday.

'Truth and justice'

The incident has strengthened Italian opposition to the continuing military presence in Iraq.

Six in 10 Italians now think the Iraq war was wrong.

Mr Fini rejected Ms Sgrena's suggestion that the car was deliberately targeted as "groundless".

"We ask for truth and justice," he said. "We hope that within the next few hours this affirmed wish for loyal co-operation will yield its first major concrete result."

"We hope that this is not an opportunity to whip up political campaigns and to sow anti-American sentiment in public opinion, which certainly have no reason to exist."



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4328551.stm <!-- E BO -->



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[Shotgun]

How about investigating whether or not this dumb broad was actually kidnapped or simply part of a scheme to fund her allies committing terrorist acts on Iraqis. Her different versions of the story all are full of lies.

There were 400 shots fired at the vehicle and only one death...stunning. If this were true, the soldiers at that checkpoint should be put on trial for incompetence.

 

[xpanda]

How about investigating whether or not this dumb broad was actually kidnapped or simply part of a scheme to fund her allies committing terrorist acts on Iraqis. Her different versions of the story all are full of lies.

There were 400 shots fired at the vehicle and only one death...stunning. If this were true, the soldiers at that checkpoint should be put on trial for incompetence.

You're not going all "Doc" on us are you, pooper doo?

 

[Shotgun]

You're not going all "Doc" on us are you, pooper doo?

I can only hope one day I'm on par with Doc. You do bring up an interesting angle though. I wonder what the Book of Revelations would say about this attempted modern day crucifixtion of Ms Sgreni. Is this just one more sign of the impending Armageddon?

The woman is a certifiable kook, likely related in some way to Stucco (without the homosexuality obsession however). There's an interesting article here from an Italian newspaper:

http://www.corriere.it/english/editoriali/Galli_della_Loggia/070305.shtml

 

[xpanda]

Is it your suggestion, then, that she is somehow involved in the shooting death of Calipari? I'm guessing 'no' ... but you are sounding all conspiracy-like.

Is the issue at hand her role in her kidnapping or anything of the sort? Not in my mind. It's about trigger-happy soldiers -- something that is the inevitable consequence of training people to be nothing more than killers for the state, personal motivation notwithstanding. When the Canadians were killed by 'friendly' American fire, nobody thought it was on purpose, of course, but warzones completely change the mentality of an individual and lead to such accidents.

It's sad, but inevitable. In Sgreni's case, it's also terribly ironic.

War is the stupidest goddamn thing human beings ever came up with.

 

[Shotgun]

Is it your suggestion, then, that she is somehow involved in the shooting death of Calipari? I'm guessing 'no' ... but you are sounding all conspiracy-like.

Is the issue at hand her role in her kidnapping or anything of the sort? Not in my mind. It's about trigger-happy soldiers -- something that is the inevitable consequence of training people to be nothing more than killers for the state, personal motivation notwithstanding. When the Canadians were killed by 'friendly' American fire, nobody thought it was on purpose, of course, but warzones completely change the mentality of an individual and lead to such accidents.

It's sad, but inevitable. In Sgreni's case, it's also terribly ironic.

War is the stupidest goddamn thing human beings ever came up with.

I think her 'kidnapping' may have been a farce and led to the death of a brave man sent to get her out of Iraq. A lot of things about her capture smells but I'll wait for more details. She obviously is a mouthpiece for the terrorists.

It is pretty apparent that the Italians deserve a lot of the blame for this incident though. Sgrena admits that they were weaving back and forth dodging potholes and having a grand time on one of the most dangerous sections of highway in Iraq. Was the driver familiar with Iraq? It doesn't sound like it. They didn't use a convoy; they rented a beat up old truck in order to remain inconspicuous. They took her out at night, failed to inform the Americans and didn't heed the checkpoint warnings. What the hell should the soldiers have done differently?

This is completely different from the typical friendly fire. The Canadians were killed because of incompetence. I knew a guy in Gulf War 1 who was one of the first deaths in the war because an Apache pilot mistook his tank for an Iraqi one. These were mistakes where the dead had absolutely no control over the situation. That's not the case here.

 

[xpanda]

The Italian foreign minister claims that the Americans were informed of her travel plans.

If this is the case, then the American soldiers don't have much of an excuse beyond 'we shoot at anything that moves funny cause it's a war.' That in mind, anyone who enters a warzone knows the risk they're taking.

Again, war is the stupidest goddamn thing humans ever invented. I'd like to bîtch-slap Sun Tzu right into next week, frankly. "Art", my ass.

*ahem* pardon me ... I'm feeling a tad bîtchier than normal today.

 

[Shotgun]

The Italian foreign minister claims that the Americans were informed of her travel plans.

If this is the case, then the American soldiers don't have much of an excuse beyond 'we shoot at anything that moves funny cause it's a war.' That in mind, anyone who enters a warzone knows the risk they're taking.

Again, war is the stupidest goddamn thing humans ever invented. I'd like to bîtch-slap Sun Tzu right into next week, frankly. "Art", my ass.

*ahem* pardon me ... I'm feeling a tad bîtchier than normal today.

The US denies knowing the travel plans. The foreign minister is quoted as saying "made 'all the necessary contacts' with US authorities in Baghdad" which is extremely vague and sounds as if he is hiding something. The soldiers don't shoot at anything that moves; they shoot at anything they suspect is a suicide bomber. This vehicle was the only one shot at that checkpoint. This means A) it was an ambush, or B) the vehicle acted in ways that the soldiers thought put their life in danger.

Since the Italian foreign minister refutes Sgrena's claim of an ambush, it is only logical to assume that the vehicle was acting awfully strange.
What was the rush to get out of Iraq? Why didn't Sgrena stick around and have a conversation with the Iraqi authorities to help find these kidnappers?

Something extremely strange is going on here.

 

[stucco43]

The latest Iraq horror
An editorial
March 8, 2005



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</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=middle><SMALL>Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi greets journalist Giuliana Sgrena at a Rome hospital. (AP Photo/Enrico Olivera)</SMALL> </TD></TR><TR><TD align=right>
<SCRIPT language=JavaScript type=text/javascript> </SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>It is rare for the Bush White House to offer a correct assessment of anything that has happened in Iraq. But White House communications director Dan Bartlett could not have been more right when he acknowledged that the wounding of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena - and the killing of an Italian secret service agent who shielded her from a spray of bullets fired by U.S. troops - was "horrific."

There have been so many unnecessary deaths, so many instances of brutality and so many ugly developments in Iraq that it would be ridiculous to try to identify the most horrific among them. But the wounding of Sgrena, a respected left-wing journalist, and the killing of agent Nicola Calipari certainly will rank high on the list. And it could have dramatic repercussions for President Bush's misadventure in that battered land.

The United States is claiming that the attack on the car that was carrying Sgrena to the airport after she was released from more than a month of captivity by Iraqi insurgents took place only after Sgrena's driver failed to heed signals to stop at a checkpoint. Sgrena disputes that scenario, however, telling an Italian television interviewer that "there was no bright light, no signal."

Sgrena said the car was traveling at normal speed and that the first indication she had of trouble came when the U.S. troops started firing on the vehicle. "At that point a rain of fire and bullets came at us, forever silencing the happy voices from a few minutes earlier," Sgrena wrote in an article published Sunday in her newspaper, Il Manifesto.

Sgrena wrote that she lived because "Nicola Calipari dove on top of me to protect me and immediately, and I mean immediately, I felt his last breath as he died on me."

The editor of Il Manifesto said Italian officials told him that between 300 and 400 rounds were fired into the car. Along with Sgrena, two Italian intelligence agents were wounded in the shooting.

Bartlett describes this as an "accident." Many Italians, including Sgrena, are not so sure. "The fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known," she told a television interviewer. "The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostage, everybody knows that. So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."

This is an exceptionally serious charge, which no one should accept at face value. This is not a place for speculation; this is a place for aggressive investigation. The problem is that, with the administration's track record, the results of any U.S.-led investigation that clears the United States of wrongdoing will be greeted with skepticism. The Bush administration, which desperately wants to maintain Italian political and military support for the occupation of Iraq, has a serious credibility problem.

The international journalists organization Reporters Without Borders has called for a United Nations investigation of the incident. Citing problems with past investigations managed by the U.S. military, Reporters Without Borders secretary general Robert Menard said, "It is clear that this enquiry cannot be conducted just by the U.S. Army."

Whether the U.N. is the proper investigatory agency can be debated. But there can be no question about the need for an independent inquiry. If this was the accident that the White House claims, that needs to be established beyond a shadow of a doubt. If it was something other than an accident, then the truth must be revealed - not merely to aid the decisions of Italian leaders but to provide honest American officials with the information they need to address a state of affairs that could give new meaning to the term "horrific."

 

[Woody0]

The Italian foreign minister claims that the Americans were informed of her travel plans.

The US denies knowing the travel plans.

I've already figured out that someone is lying. However when a high level intelligence agent enters a war zone that occupied by an ally it is beyond belief that the ally would not be informed. Whether that information moves down the chain of command is another matter. I've also figured out that we will never get the truth on this unfortunate death.

 

[Shotgun]

I've already figured out that someone is lying. However when a high level intelligence agent enters a war zone that occupied by an ally it is beyond belief that the ally would not be informed. Whether that information moves down the chain of command is another matter. I've also figured out that we will never get the truth on this unfortunate death.

I think there's a lot of evidence still to be looked at. The car certainly doesn't show damage from 400 rounds as Sgrena claims. The handful of bullets that Sgrena says she scooped up is a lie, as anyone with any experience firing guns will tell you (does Italy's gun laws prevent someone like Sgrena from knowing this?). It also shows that the soldiers stopped firing when the vehicle came to a stop.

Sgrena is making stuff up to make the US look bad. How much she is creating will be a helluva story.

 

[Woody0]

I think there's a lot of evidence still to be looked at. The car certainly doesn't show damage from 400 rounds as Sgrena claims.

What is the source for your information concerning the car? The Associated Press was quoted as stating that the US military didn't know where it was.





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[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Published on Tuesday, March 8, 2005 by the Toronto Star <!-- #EndEditable -->[/font]​

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[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]<!-- #BeginEditable "Header" -->Colleagues Under Fire But U.S. Media Mute
My complaint about the compliant
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[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]<!-- #BeginEditable "author" -->by Antonia Zerbisias <!-- #EndEditable -->[/font]​

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You have to wonder what Eason Jordan thinks about last Friday's attack on the car that took Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena from her kidnapping ordeal to her close call at the Baghdad airport.

Jordan is the CNN news chief who in January made controversial remarks about U.S. troops targeting journalists, comments which led to his resigning "to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq."

Alarming indeed: at least 73 and counting.

Never mind that, according to David Gergen, the Harvard professor and former presidential adviser, who moderated the Davos panel on which Jordan made his statements, Jordan was merely refuting the idea that the dead journalists were actually "collateral damage."

In the rush to hang Jordan, the right — and their willing news twinkies in the media — seem totally unperturbed that the only place reporters feel halfway safe in Iraq is either embedded in the belly of the U.S. military beast or on a Baghdad hotel roof, shielded by satellite dishes.

And who can blame the reporters in Iraq for feeling that way?

Consider that Sgrena's car, reportedly 700 metres from the airport, had already cleared other U.S. military checkpoints. Still, it was drilled by bullets.

Although exactly how many bullets remains a mystery since, at last report, when the Associated Press asked to see the car — in which Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was killed and another official injured — the U.S. military said it didn't know where the thing was.

Which doesn't inspire confidence in the investigation into this murky affair that the U.S. has promised to conduct.

Recall the last couple of so-called investigations into the deaths of journalists by U.S. fire.

After the April 2003 attack on Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, a place where hundreds of journalists were known to be holed up, the U.S. Army refused to release the details of its investigation. Of course, its finding cleared the U.S. of killing two cameramen: Jose Couso of Spain's Telecinco and Ukraine's Taras Protsyuk, who was working for Reuters.

A few months later, Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana — a Palestinian who had survived beatings by West Bank settlers and the Israeli army — filmed his own death by U.S. tank. That happened just moments after he had checked in with the troops, providing his coordinates.

Again, a U.S. military investigation cleared the shooters, saying they had mistaken his video camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

And so it goes.

Now I am not suggesting for a second that the U.S. was out to hit Sgrena and the officials who saved her from her kidnappers. But who knows? Sgrena, who was there, says one thing and the U.S. says another.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media and bloggers are making a big deal out of the fact that she works for Il Manifesto, a "communist paper."

Yesterday, the Moonie-owned Washington Times was floating the story that Italian authorities had not properly notified the U.S. military about the Sgrena vehicle movements.

So, yes, it could have all been an honest mistake or, as faithful reader Carlos Coimbra cynically put it to me in an email, just another "Baghdad speeding ticket."

I can't say for sure one way or the other — unlike, say, both CTV and Citytv who seemed to have concluded their own investigations Friday night when they said the U.S. "mistakenly'' shot Sgrena's car and rescuers. What I find really disturbing is how few American journalists are protesting what appears to be the Pentagon's callous disregard for getting out the truth, either by making it safer for journalists to do their jobs or by its own full disclosure of the facts of these killings. Forget shooting the messenger. Now the U.S. media are shooting themselves in the foot.

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[Woody0]

Reuters report based on Italian Foreign Minister's statement:


Published on Tuesday, March 8, 2005 by Reuters
Italy Demands Justice from U.S. Over Iraq Death
by Crispian Balmer

ROME -- Italy's foreign minister rejected Tuesday a U.S. account of how its forces killed an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq and urged Washington to punish any soldiers found guilty of wrongdoing in the shooting.

"It is our duty to demand truth and justice," Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini told parliament.

Agent Nicola Calipari has been hailed as a hero in Italy after he died shielding a newly freed hostage from U.S. gunfire as they drove to Baghdad airport last Friday.

The killing has strained ties between the United States and Italy, which has been one of President Bush's staunchest allies in Europe over the war in Iraq.

Fini dismissed speculation that U.S. forces deliberately fired on the Italians, but he said a U.S. military statement on the incident appeared to be at odds with what actually happened.

"It was certainly an accident, an accident caused by a series of circumstances and coincidences," Fini said.

"But this doesn't mean, in fact it makes it necessary, to demand that events are clarified ... to identify those responsible, and if people are to blame then to request and ensure that the guilty parties are punished," he added.

The U.S. military has said its soldiers fired on the Italians' car after it approached a checkpoint at speed and failed to heed signals to slow down.

But in a detailed reconstruction, Fini insisted that the Italians had been driving slowly and had received no warning.

APOLOGY

Fini said that immediately after the shooting, U.S. soldiers had apologized profusely to freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena and an unnamed Italian intelligence officer who survived the fire.

"The government has a duty to point out that the reconstruction of the tragic event that I have set out ... does not coincide totally with what has been said so far by the U.S. authorities," Fini said.

President Bush has promised an investigation. In previous "friendly-fire" deaths, the Pentagon has not publicly admitted to any culpability on the part of U.S. forces.

Italy deployed 3,000 troops to Iraq following the fall of Baghdad and has made clear that it will not withdraw its troops despite Calipari's death. But it fears any hint of a U.S. whitewash over the incident will fuel anti-American sentiment.

Sgrena, an award-winning journalist who was held hostage for a month in Iraq before Calipari masterminded her release, has suggested the Italians were fired at because the United States opposes Rome's practice of negotiating with kidnappers.

The White House has rejected that suggestion.

FATAL MISSION

The Islamic militant group that held Sgrena hostage said in a tape released Tuesday that they had rejected offers of a ransom for her release. Italian newspapers have reported that between $6 million to $8 million was handed over by Italy.

Fini Tuesday gave a long account of Calipari's fatal mission to Baghdad but made no mention of any ransom. He said Rome had never considered a military swoop to free Sgrena for fear such an operation would endanger her life.

He said Calipari arrived in Baghdad Friday afternoon after establishing contact with the kidnappers. He checked in with U.S. authorities at the airport before driving off with an Italian colleague to meet an Iraqi middleman.

The middleman took them to Sgrena, who was seated in the wreckage of a car, dressed in black robes and wearing a mask.

On the drive back to the airport, the Italians left the lights on in the car to help identify them to U.S. checkpoints.

As they neared the airport, the car slowed to about 40-km/h because the road was wet and because the driver had to make a sharp turning. Half way around the curve, a searchlight picked out the car and guns opened fire for 10-15 seconds, Fini said.

The intelligence officer who survived the attack was forced to kneel in the road until the soldiers realized who he was.

"Two young Americans approached our officer and, demoralized, repeatedly apologized for what had happened," Fini said.

 

[GAMEFACE]

The wrong Italian got the bullet to the head, that's the only mistake here. The only reason not to tell the Americans and receive an escort was to hide the millions paid to the gutter rats, end of story. Lets not mince words here.

 

[WHALE]

I hope that not only the Italian government but the entire int'l community will claim for these.

 

[TOW]

There will be a lot of political speculation on this accident. The journailst who had been kidnapped is a militant of the opposition, and with a round of local and regional elections coming up a few months from now this very unfortunate accident will be primarily utilized for internal propaganda.

However I believe a thourough investigation by the U.S. authorities is due, at least out of respect for the position that Italy has held within the Iraqi military campaign, unlike France and Germany. Unfortunately no investigation will bring back Mr. Calipari's life, who has undoubtfully died as an hero under friendly fire.

 

[eek.]

The car certainly doesn't show damage from 400 rounds as Sgrena claims.

She never claimed that.
I notice a lot of blogs claim she did.
Unnamed "Italian officials" make that claim....in blogs.

The handful of bullets that Sgrena says she scooped up

Again, I can only find blogs that make this scooped up casings claim.

Transcript: Giuliana Sgrena interview
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4324251.stm

could be worth a new thread...

 

[eek.]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=629 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD colSpan=3>Transcript: Giuliana Sgrena interview

</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=416><!-- S BO -->In an interview with the BBC's Newshour programme, freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena began by describing the conditions in which she had been held hostage for a month. <HR>

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Sgrena is demanding an explanation from the Americans

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->The condition of life was not bad from the material point of view but I was in a position of risk and so you can imagine it was not easy, it was very difficult and very hard to spend the days as prisoner in Iraq.

What did your captors tell you when you were hostage?

That I needed to help them to ask [Silvio] Berlusconi to withdraw the troops. They saw all what happens in Italy, demonstrations against the occupation, demonstrations for my liberation. And so they [became] aware that I was really working against the occupation and people were supporting me and so they told me: "We have seen that you are very appreciated in Italy". And that helped me to be freed.

You then became aware presumably that negotiations were going on about your possible release.



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I can't say it was deliberate because we can't say if there was a lack of information

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I could imagine that negotiations were going on but I can't tell you more because I was not aware of what was the object of the negotiations. And when I was freed it was the last of my problems which kind of negotiations were going on.

You do not know whether money was paid for your freedom?

No, I don't know.

Tell us about the man [Italian security agent Nicola Calipari] who came to try and secure your release.

I saw him for the first time when he came to [collect] me. He was a very special man. I immediately felt in contact with him and he gave me hope. But this was too short because he died after half an hour.

Tell us about the car journey you shared with him.

We were on our way to the airport when the tanks started to strike against us and he tried to cover me and he was shot. He died and, me, I was safe but he was dead.

When did you become aware that your car was being fired at?

We had no signal. We were just on the way to the airport. They started to shoot at us without any light or signal. There was no block, there was nothing. It was so immediate. I didn't know how I was alive after all that attack.

Why do you think the Americans opened fire?

We were not a hidden car. We were just a car on the road with lights and we were not running without any signal. So you have to ask the Americans because we don't know what happened.



<!-- S IIMA --><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=203 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>

Nicola Calipari died protecting Ms Sgrena

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- E IIMA -->Did the Americans continue to fire when your car had come to a halt?

Our car was destroyed. And then the driver got out and was shouting "we're Italian, we're Italian". So they came and they saw what happened. But I was badly injured so I can't explain exactly what happened after because I was waiting for 20 minutes on the road for a military car to bring me to the hospital.

I don't know if they knew what they were doing or not but it's a big responsibility so they have to respond to what happened because it's impossible to shoot a car on a road to the airport without giving any signal, any stop or any check.





Do you think it was deliberate?

I can't say it was deliberate because we can't say if there was a lack of information. But also a lack of information in this case is [their] responsibility because you are in a war field and you have the responsibility to pass immediately any information.

The information was given to the Italians to tell the Americans that we were on the road. Now, I can't say why they shot at us in this way but it's a very big responsibility and we ask for a response on what happened.

So what did this security agent do when he heard the firing?

When the driver said "they're attacking us", one of the [agents] tried to say we're Italians but it was impossible to get out of the car because the car was under this rain of fire.

And the other one tried to protect me and he died. I was pushing down to avoid the bullets and after I don't know how long, I found that he was dead.



He died in your arms?

Yes.

How do you feel about the man who saved your life?

I am very, very sad and feel pain for him. I'm sorry not to be able to go to the funeral because I am in hospital.

He was a brave man. Yes.<!-- E BO -->


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[Shotgun]

Here's a nice letter about lovely Sgrena's accusations (who can easily be defined with Stalin's phrase "useful idiot":

My son, who is home from Baghdad on for two weeks R&R, was mad as hell about the reports that Sgrena claimed US troops intentionally tried to kill her. He told me that his platoon (and, presumably hundreds or thousands of other US troops) spent considerable time searching for her, trying to find and release her. Each time he and his troops stop a car or enter a building they put their lives at risk. They did this — putting themselves at risk — following orders to try to find and rescue her, not to kill her. If US troops were trying to kill her instead of rescue her, it hardly could have been kept a secret, since all hundreds or thousands of troops searching would have to have received similar orders. At the risk of stating the obvious, it would have been pointless to give orders to one roadblock team to shoot her if everyone else had orders to find and rescue her. What nonsense!

The Americans who lend aid and comfort to the people floating these conspiracy theories should not be tolerated when they next claim to “support the troops.”

 

[919]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000836000

The U.S. government now says that John Negroponte was passing through the area and it was one of his crew who fired the bullet that killed Calipari. Supposedly it was his own personal bodyguard who fired the shot. http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/1127940.htm