ROME – Italy and the United States clashed Tuesday over the shooting by American forces of an Italian intelligence officer in Iraq, with each government offering sharply contradictory accounts.
Italy has demanded a full investigation into the incident, and the U.S. military said Tuesday it was broadening its inquiry to examine numerous shootings at checkpoints in Iraq to determine if procedures need to be changed.
The top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday he was unaware that Italian agents were securing the release of a journalist from insurgents. Army Gen. George Casey Jr. said he would have expected to be informed that a car carrying the Italian journalist was headed for the Baghdad airport.
Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, appearing before parliament in Rome, said the car that U.S. forces opened fire on Friday night was neither speeding nor was it warned to stop, as the U.S. military has claimed. The car was carrying Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had just been freed from Iraqi kidnappers, and Nicola Calipari, the intelligence agent who secured her release, on their way to the Baghdad airport. He was killed, and Sgrena was injured, with a shrapnel wound to the shoulder. Besides Sgrena, a second agent also was wounded.
Fini said he was basing his account on interviews with the driver, another Italian intelligence agent. It supports the version given by Sgrena.
However, Fini said he did not believe the troops deliberately targeted the Italians, as Sgrena has suggested. “It was certainly an accident,” he said.
Fini also said Calipari had alerted U.S. authorities that the car would be making its way to the Baghdad airport, where the group was to take an Italian presidential jet back to Rome. Calipari “made all the necessary contacts with the U.S. authorities” in charge of airport security, Fini said.
Fini said the U.S. troops focused a searchlight on the car and immediately began firing for about 10 or 20 seconds. They then stopped and approached the vehicle. They took the driver out, walked him several feet away, forced him to kneel on the ground, and then apparently realized their mistake. Two young soldiers apologized profusely to the driver, who was wounded, Fini said.
Army officials have said soldiers at a Baghdad checkpoint warned the driver to stop, making hand and arm signals and flashing white lights. A senior Pentagon official said Tuesday that soldiers had flashed the lights when the car was about 400 feet from the checkpoint. Soldiers on the scene reported that the car was speeding on the airport road, one of the most dangerous in Baghdad and the location of numerous car bombings.
When the driver didn’t stop, the soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division shot into the engine block, which stopped the vehicle. The Pentagon official said the car was hit with an unknown number of 7.62-caliber rounds, which are used in an M-60 machine gun.
Trial for Hussein
Iraq’s interim national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said ousted dictator Saddam Hussein could stand trial by year’s end. “I am very much hopeful that Saddam will be in the box around September and October, before the general referendum” on a constitution, he said.
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