MSNBC.com
U.S.: 'Absurd' to think troops targeted Italian
Wounded reporter suggests shooting in Iraq was deliberate
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 11:45 a.m. ET March 7, 2005
WASHINGTON - The White House on Monday said it was “absurd” for an Italian journalist to charge that U.S. military forces may have deliberately targeted her car as she was being escorted by Italian agents who had just negotiated her freedom from hostage-takers.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the car carrying Giuliana Sgrena was traveling on one of the most dangerous roads in Iraq on Friday when it was fired upon. An Italian intelligence officer in the car was shot and killed.
Responding to Sgrena’s statement that the car may have been deliberately targeted, McClellan said. “It’s absurd to make any such suggestion, that our men and women in uniform would deliberately target innocent citizens."
“That’s just absurd,” McClellan repeated.
He said the airport road “has been a place where suicide car bombers have launched attacks. It’s been a place where regime elements have fired upon coalition forces. It is a dangerous road and it is a combat zone that our coalition forces are in. Oftentimes, they have to make split second decisions to protect their own security.”
“And we regret this incident,” McClellan added. “We are going to fully investigate what exactly occurred.”
Reporter's comments
Sgrena — who works for the communist newspaper Il Manifesto, a fierce opponent of the war and a frequent critic of U.S. policy — said it was possible they were targeted deliberately because the United States opposes Italy’s policy of negotiating with kidnappers.
In an interview published Monday in the Corriere della Sera newspaper, she said she doesn’t know what led to the attack.
“I believe, but it’s only a hypothesis, that the happy ending to the negotiations must have been irksome,” she said. “The Americans are against this type of operation. For them, war is war, human life doesn’t count for much.”
In separate remarks Sunday, she said that “the fact that the Americans don’t want negotiations to free the hostages is known.”
“The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostage, everybody knows that,” she added, speaking to Sky TG24 television by telephone from his hospital bed, where she is recovering from a shrapnel wound. “So I don’t see why I should rule out that I could have been the target.”
Rescue details unknown
The White House earlier described the shooting as a “horrific accident” and promised a full investigation. But Sgrena and an Italian agent who survived rejected the U.S. military’s account of the shooting, claiming that American soldiers gave no warning before they opened fire.
The shooting has fueled anti-American sentiment in Italy, where a majority of people opposed the war in Iraq and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s decision to send 3,000 troops after Saddam Hussein’s ouster.
Neither Italian nor U.S. officials gave details about how authorities won Sgrena’s release after a month in captivity. But Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno was quoted as saying it was “very probable” a ransom was paid. U.S. officials have cautioned against ransoms, saying they encourage further kidnappings.
Sgrena said she knew nothing about a ransom.
In an article Sunday, Sgrena said her captors warned her shortly before her release to beware of the Americans. She later told Italian state TV RAI that “when they let me go, it was a difficult moment for me because they told me, ‘The Americans don’t want you to return alive to Italy.”’ She didn’t elaborate.
Italian ministers have rejected Sgrena’s claim that she might have been deliberately shot at, but they fear any hint of a U.S. whitewash will inflame anti-American sentiment in Italy.
“What has happened cannot be used as an alibi to revive anti-Americanism,” said the powerful speaker of the lower house of parliament, Pier Ferdinando Casini. “(But) friendship can never be servitude and for this reason we have to ask with determination to have the truth and clarity,” he told La Repubblica newspaper.
State funeral for agent
Monday also saw hundreds of people pack into a church in Rome to pay their last respects to the officer killed, Nicola Calipari.
U.S. Ambassador Mel Sembler joined Berlusconi and other Italian dignitaries at the state funeral.
Mourners stood as an honor guard slowly carried the casket, draped with an Italian flag, into Santa Maria degli Angeli Church. In the front row, Calipari’s relatives gripped each other’s hands and dabbed away tears.
“He died as a hero, and I cannot forget he had also helped to free us,” Maurizio Agliana, one of four Italian security guards kidnapped in Iraq last April, told the crowd.
The body was returned from Iraq late Saturday. Tens of thousands of people viewed it Sunday while it lay in state at Rome’s Vittoriano monument.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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