During a press-conference shortly after the liberation of his girlfriend Giuliana Sgrena, the famous journalist for Il Manifesto who was kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq for nearly a month, Piero Scolari had this to say:
It's like an hallucination, all of this is like an hallucination. Giuliana risked her lifed, they could have killed her. And I don't mean Iraqi criminal gangs but American soldiers. We are in the hands of madmen. We can't stay another minute longer down there. They fired more than 300-400 rounds on the car that was taking Giuliana to the airport... they were like madmen, our agents down there said, immediately after the shooting stopped. Complete insanity. They killed Nicola Calipari, an extraordinary man, a special person. Nicola died in order to save Giuliana, he shielded her with his body.
While the precise details of the shooting still remain unclear, and an angry Premier Silvio Berlusconi is demanding that the Bush administration conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that "someone assumes the responsibility for what has happened here," Scolari has provided what, so far, seems to be the most complete, albeit unofficial, account of the incident that I could find. According to l'Unità, Scolari stated:
The Americans shut down the cell phones of our agents who were with Giuliana. They shut them off while they [the agents] were speaking with Silvio Berlusconi, they prevented the emergency medical technicians from approaching the wounded," Scolari recounts, basing himself on the eyewitness testimony of the Italian secret service agents at the scene. But how is it possible that all this was allowed to happen?"
In that moment I shouted at the premier [Berlusconi] that your war is to blame for this. This war is madness and these are the results that it produces.
Scolari dismisses as ridiculous the official story-line that has been circulating in US military circles that "the car was driving at full speed toward the American check point" where the shooting
took place.
Giuliana and the other people who were there told me that the American attack was completely unjustified. They had allerted the whole chain of command, the Italian troops were awaiting them at the airport. Any yet, they fired 300, 400 rounds. Why?
Then the accusation:
Giuliana is in possession of information that is inconvenient for the Americans, it was an ambush directed against her.
The anguished ravings of an aggravated and aggrieved boyfriend? Or is there something more to this story then we yet know?
Meanwhile, Piero Fassino, secretary of the DS (Democrats of the Left), commenting publicly on the incident, stated:
It's incredible that a man [Calipari] who was engaged in the difficult work of saving a life was killed by those who claim to be in Iraq in order to protect the lives of its citizens.
Was their or wasn't their coordination between our intelligence serivces in Iraq and the other intelligence services of the forces of the coalition? Were their information-sharing procedures that were agreed upon in advance between our intelligence services and the American military forces? And,if so, why did the check point start firing?.
Good question, Piero. Your (dkos) correspondent in Italy will continue digging into this story so as to keep you up-to-date on this mysterious series of events.
Nicola Calipari
Giuliana Sgrena