Doug Lorimer
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi whose right-wing government has 3000 troops participating in the US-led occupation of Iraq, told the Italian parliament on March 10 that the US must take responsibility for the killing of Italian secret service agent Nicola Calipari. He has rejected the US account of events.
Calipari died on March 4 when US soldiers fired on the car he was travelling in with Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist for Italy's left-wing Il Manifesto newspaper. Sgrena had just been released after having been taken hostage in Baghdad early February. A prominent opponent of the occupation of Iraq, she had been gathering information from refugees from Fallujah on atrocities committed by US troops. Calipari had negotiated Sgrena's release.
Berlusconi has been under pressure about the attack. Late last month, more than half-a-million people marched behind a banner calling for the liberation not only of Sgrena, but of peace, and an end to the occupation. Sgrena's bold anti-war stand has mobilised resistance to the occupation, and Italy's participation in it, which has always been unpopular. His biggest problem is increasing rumours that the military were trying to kill Sgrena, to prevent her research from becoming public.
In a March 6 article for Il Manifesto, Sgrena voiced her fears: "[My kidnappers] declared that they were committed to the fullest to freeing me but I had to be careful, 'the Americans don't want you to go back'. Then when they had told me I considered those words superfluous and ideological. At [the moment the US opened fire on her car] they risked acquiring the flavour of the bitterest of truths, at this time I cannot tell you the rest."
According to Sgrena, "300 to 400" bullets were fired "without any justification" by a US patrol. Sgrena was wounded in the left shoulder and lung. Calipari died instantly from a shot to the head. Two other passengers in the car — Italian intelligence agents — were also wounded.
Washington has claimed that US soldiers had fired on the speeding car only after it failed to stop at a checkpoint. He told the Italian Senate that the car had stopped immediately after US soldiers had flashed a light at it on the road to Baghdad airport.
Immediately after news of the attack became public, Italian communications minister Maurizio Gasparri told one news agency, "The military mission must carry on because it consolidates democracy and liberty in Iraq." This defence of Italy's participation in the US-led occupation prompted outrage among ordinary Italians, most of whom are opposed to the US-led occupation of Iraq.
In an attempt to head off public anger at the US killing of Calipari from generating even bigger protests against his government's staunch support for the US war in Iraq, Berlusconi declared that he was certain Washington had "no intention of evading the truth". He announced that an inquiry into Calipari's killing ordered by US President George Bush and conducted by a US led by a US brigadier-general would be completed within four weeks.
While the attack on Sgrena's car captured headlines worldwide, killings by US soldiers in Iraq — at checkpoints and elsewhere — take place daily, but they don't make the news or lead to official inquiries by the US government because the victims are Iraqis.
From Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005.
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