Posted on 01/17/2006 3:29:21 PM PST by Patriot from Philly
ROME - Italian prosecutors investigating the killing of an Italian secret service agent at a checkpoint in Iraq plan to charge a U.S. soldier with murder and attempted murder, Italian media reported Tuesday.
U.S. gunfire killed Nicola Calipari near the checkpoint on March 4, as the agent was heading to Baghdad airport in a car with an Italian journalist who had just been released after being held hostage by militants.
The ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported Tuesday that prosecutors planned to charge the soldier with murdering Calipari and attempting to murder the agent driving the car as well as the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, who were both wounded during the incident. State TV news Tg1, and private SKY TG 24 television news also carried the report.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Franco Ionta, could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, said the Pentagon had not seen any charges actually filed and declined to comment.
An Italian government report in May blamed U.S. military authorities for failing to signal there was a military checkpoint ahead on the road. It also contended that stress, inexperience and fatigue played a role in the shooting.
The Americans insisted that the car was going fast enough to alarm the soldiers. The Italians have said the vehicle was traveling slowly.
Police and ballistic experts assigned by Rome prosecutors to examine the car have concluded it was traveling slower than the U.S. military claimed. They agreed with U.S. findings that only one soldier fired at the car.
The shooting angered Italians, already largely opposed to the war in Iraq, and led many to step up calls for withdrawing the Italian contingent. Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who sent some 3,000 troops to Iraq after Saddam Hussein's ouster, insisted the incident would not affect troop levels or Italy's friendship with Washington.
You did just fine my friend.
Looks excellent -- ya done good.
Like the kid that was shot while waving the air pelelt gun the other day, you have to expect this sort of thing. Drive towards soldiers in a war zone and don't stop, someone is going to shoot.
You did fine.
Charging a military roadblock at any speed can ruin your whole day, can't it?
It may have been an accident, I doubt it was intentional murder.
Yes, the Humvee's and armed men weren't very clear.
Yes, this is ridiculous. The US investigated this case, why charge a GI with "murder" for a friendly fire incident. I think the US will have to get much firmer with its "allies" on these cases.
Looks good and you waited at least a day to post. What restraint. Unlike the Italians. I say come and get him yourselves jerks.
rhetorical question:
Does Italy have jurisdiction over something that happened in Iraq?
The US is not party to the "international court", and this is exactly the reason we are not.
I was in Italy last week and noticed that they practically have Calipari up for sainthood. It should also be pointed out that the way Italians drive is normally foot to the floor and all over the road. Speed limits and lane demarcations are only a suggestion.
And by that I mean you did not join today.
Italy can go pound sand.
Apart from using the word "right" instead of "correctly" your first post is flawless. I don't think I've ever seen one like it, which is why I had to find something.
Italy is looking for French/Aruban boycott of tourism and products
How about all of the mobsters they sent us?
As opposed to all of those dangerous Scots who came here.....
Europeans are not adults yet -
The Italian secret service agent was killed trying to run a checkpoint. His death was intentional, it was not murder. IMHO his death was suicide by American soldier. The Italian gov't should repay the Army the cost of the ammunition.
"ballistic experts assigned by Rome prosecutors to examine the car have concluded it was traveling slower than the U.S. military claimed."
I totally doubt the speed of the car could be measured with any kind of certainty based on ballistics of the bullets.
I'm surprised there would be any legal mechanism by which a soldier acting under orders and following procedures in a war zone could be charged with 'murder'. Under those circumstances, a soldier is not an individual, but only a part of the military force. How could he be held accountable as an individual ?
If I recall, weren't the Italian agents in Iraq acting on their own ? Their activities were not coordinated or sanctioned by US forces, were they ? Or am I mis-remembering something and the checkpoint was supposed to be expecting this car ?
This GI will be safe as long as we don't have to surrender to the jurisdiction of an America-hating international body
Thanks for the feedback. LOL. No, thanks to everyone for their feedback. I've commented often but never got the nerve to post. This one had me so mad, I had to!!
If Kerry was president he would have handed him over in a second, and then begged forgiveness ....
Sounds like we need a round of base closings in Italy....
The hubris of Giuliana Sgrena
A naive Italian communist journalist got herself into big trouble in Baghdad
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Giuliana Sgrena does not lack a sense of self-importance. The 56-year-old journalist for the Italian communist newspaper Il Manifesto thinks she knows so many deep dark secrets the U.S. military tried to shut her up permanently.
Sgrena went to Iraq to report on the heroic resistance to the American imperialists. Dutch journalist Harald Doornbos rode in the airplane to Baghdad with her.
"Be careful not to get kidnapped," Doornbos warned Sgrena.
"You don't understand the situation," she responded, according to Doornbos' account last week in Nederlands Dagblad. (Excerpts were translated into English and posted on a Dutch writer's Web blog.) "The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers. The enemies of the Americans have nothing to fear."
Sgrena left her hotel the morning of Feb. 4 to interview refugees from Fallujah, the resistance stronghold captured by U.S. Marines in November. The interviews didn't go well.
"The refugees ... would not listen to me," she said. "I had in front of me the accurate confirmation of the analysis of what the Iraqi society had become as a result of the war and they would throw their truth in my face."
Sgrena's feelings were hurt that the refugees could be so curt to her: "I who had risked everything, challenging the Italian government who didn't want journalists to reach Iraq and the Americans who don't want our work to be witnessed of what really became of that country with the war and notwithstanding that which they call elections." (Maybe it reads better in Italian, or maybe she just can't write worth a damn.)
She got nabbed on her way back to her hotel. Sgrena told her captors she was on their side, and suggested they kidnap an American soldier instead. But the U.S. government doesn't pay ransoms.
The Italian government did pay a ransom estimated by various sources at between $1 million and $10 million, and Sgrena was released into the custody of Italian intelligence officers. On the night of March 4, their vehicle approached a checkpoint near Baghdad International Airport. The car did not stop. U.S. troops opened fire. Nicola Calipari was killed, Sgrena was slightly wounded.
Sgrena said the soldiers deliberately tried to kill her, but didn't hazard a guess as to how the soldiers knew she was in that vehicle. According to the U.S. embassy and the Third Infantry Division, the Italians did not inform the Americans she'd been released. And Calipari had rented a nondescript sedan to pick up Sgrena, rather than utilize one of the Italian embassy's armored SUVs, which the soldiers might have recognized.
Sgrena and the driver said they approached the checkpoint slowly. But "slowly" seems to be a relative term for Italian drivers, and for communists. An Army officer told ABC News the car may have been going 100 mph when it was fired upon.
Sgrena claims the Americans shot without warning. "A tank started to shoot at us without any sign or any light," she told reporters March 7.
The soldiers say they used lights, and hand signals, and fired warning shots before shooting into the engine block to stop the vehicle. The car's driver said the soldiers did shine a spotlight, but opened up almost immediately afterwards.
Sgrena said "the tank" fired 300-400 shots at her car. But photographs of it published March 8 by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica indicate the vehicle suffered remarkably little damage for such a fusillade. There is a single bullet hole in the windshield, but the window glass and the fenders are otherwise intact, as is the hood.
snipped
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/05072/470072.stm
Yeah, I like your comment. I agree. If they want this soldier, then come and get him -- LOL!
this would'nt pass his "global test".guess it didn't pass the 5.56 test either.
Yeah, and maybe lots of Americans will decide to avoid Italy until this thing gets straightened out, in solidarity with this soldier.
Ok - 5.56???
The soldier is a hero. They can't have him.
Your question was my initial thought as well.
Also, couldn't the authorities of Iraq charge the Italians with espionage and acts of war? I mean, if we're going to get all "legal" about it and everything... /s
Give yourself a gold star for avoiding the urge to start with a vanity.
We can't blame the majority of the Italian people when a leftist judge acts like a moron. We have our own loony judges too.
rifle caliber in millimeters standard to most US military
This is all political. Italian courts are corrupt, left-wing, and anti-American. Plus they hope to embarass Berlusconi for supporting the war.
What I meant was that if the soldier was to set foot outside of the US,he might be in danger of extradition to Italy.For example,if he were to go to Canada,it seems very likely that they'd extradite,given their contempt for us and their support for Bin Laden.
I wonder what the Italians would say if we closed our bases in Aviano and Vicenza.
Good point. I think you're right. Maybe more American tourists should just stay home until this sort of thing gets straightened out -- if some of our Iraqi veterans can't be international tourists as a result of their service to their country, maybe lots of other American tourists will decide to stay home as well.
You said it! A$$HOLES.
We need to do something. I think the US strategy is to handle these cases very quietly. However, the Italians saw that the Spanish charged US troops for its domestic audience and nothing happened so they did it.
I think the US needs to let these countries know there is a price for this nonsense.
We could pull the visas of the magistrates. We could send the soldiers in question to the charging country and dare them to arrest them and then force the country to release the soldiers and apologize. A little humiliation may nip this in the bud.
"We can't blame the majority of the Italian people"
Our military has added $billions to the Italian economy since we liberated them. Screw'em I say.
This entire matter is ludicrous.
"We could send the soldiers in question to the charging country and dare them to arrest them and then force the country to release the soldiers and apologize"
We have a status of forces agreement which would allow the Italians to keep him there for years until the matter is resolved.
I guess our soldier will not be vacationing to Italy any time soon.
His opinion. My opinion is that using a trumped up murder charge against an innocent G.I. for domestic political purposes will sent this friendship straight down the toilet. (And I'd be happy to operate the flush handle.)
I thought SOFA covered crimes committed by an American soldier in a foreign country. For instance if an American soldier stationed in Italy robbed a store while off duty that would fall under Italian jurisdiction.
However, if an American soldier is at war in a third country and kills an Italian national in a friendly fire incident this would not be covered by SOFA. In fact, the Italians are stretching to claim jurisdiction.
The US needs to make these countries pay for this insult, and it is an insult.
I thought SOFA covered crimes committed by an American soldier in a foreign country. For instance if an American soldier stationed in Italy robbed a store while off duty that would fall under Italian jurisdiction.
However, if an American soldier is at war in a third country and kills an Italian national in a friendly fire incident this would not be covered by SOFA. In fact, the Italians are stretching to claim jurisdiction.
The US needs to make these countries pay for this insult, and it is an insult.
Not sure but I do know that legal hold can take years for minor things like car accidents depending on the country.
The US indicted Osama Bin Laden in absentia in 1998. But that was a Federal Court and Clinton's AG. How does this Italian Judge determine foriegn policy on BS charges?
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