Angry Italy demands answers
2005-03-05 23:12
Baghdad - Freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena, wounded by US soldiers, returned home on Saturday as the United States sought to provide answers to an angry Italy over the deadly shooting of her convoy.
A frail Sgrena, 56, was carried out of her airplane on Saturday morning and greeted by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni and other officials at Rome's Ciampino airport.
"They (the kidnappers) never treated me badly but I wish things had gone better last night," the exhausted journalist told colleagues of left-wing daily Il Manifesto who greeted her inside the plane.
A tempest was brewing over the tragic mishap on the road to the Baghdad airport late on Friday when US soldiers opened fire on Sgrena's speeding convoy, leaving an Italian secret service agent dead after he shielded the female journalist from the bullets.
No cover-up
Italian newspapers warned the government against a cover-up given Berlusconi's cozy relationship with Washington. The US ambassador to Rome was summoned to the PM's office to explain the friendly fire incident.
US President George W Bush later called Berlusconi to express his regrets, the White House said, pledging a "full investigation" into the shooting.
Sgrena, 56, underwent lung surgery after the shooting, which happened as she was being driven to a US base, her newspaper said.
According to the US military, the vehicle carrying Sgrena and the agent was travelling at high speed toward a checkpoint and the soldiers who fired on it waved their hands and arms, flashed white lights and fired warning shots in a failed attempt to get it to stop.
"When the driver didn't stop, the soldiers shot into the engine block, which stopped the vehicle, killing one and wounding two others," the 3rd Infantry Division said in a statement.
Berlusconi, who called on US ambassador Mel Sembler to explain the shooting, said 51-year-old secret service officer Nicola Calipari died trying to protect Sgrena from bullets fired by US soldiers at the checkpoint.
"We are petrified and dumbfounded by this fatality," he said.
"It is a pity. This was a joyful moment which made all our co-citizens happy, which has been transformed into profound pain by the death of a person who behaved so bravely," the prime minister added.
Italy has 3 000 troops in the US-led coalition in Iraq and the death will cast a new shadow over the prime minister's support for the United States.
The journalist was kidnapped on February 4 outside a Baghdad mosque by an Iraqi group who called on Rome to withdraw its troops from Iraq.
" The Americans nearly killed her," Sgrena's companion, Pier Scolari, was quoted as saying by Italy's ANSA news agency.
The chief editor of Sgrena's left-wing newspaper Il Manifesto Gabriele Polo meanwhile branded Calipari's death a "murder".
"He was hit in the head," he said.