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JAMES DEBONO speaks to Francesco Paternò, the editorial director of Il Manifesto and a colleague and friend of journalist Giuliana Sgrena and delves on the dynamics of an attack which she described as an ‘ambush’
Paternò had just met Giuliana Sgrena in hospital before speaking to MaltaToday. He said Giuliana would be operated tomorrow because she still has shrapnel near her lungs and various injuries on her shoulders. She is “in good fighting spirit”, according to Paternò, although she has been deeply hit by the death of Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari, the man who saved her life when he acted as a human shield to protect her from American bullets.
Giuliana is not expected to go back to Iraq. According to Paternò, she will not go back because “in Iraq there are no longer the circumstances to conduct proper journalism due to the ongoing war, and all journalists are considered as US spies.” He also declares that Il Manifesto would not be sending another journalist to Iraq in these circumstances.
He also corrects interpretations of Sgrena’s declaration that the American attack which led to the Calipari’s death was indeed “an ambush”. Paternò replies that Sgrena was not saying that the US troops wanted to kill her but that the dynamics of the attack were those of an ambush. He insists that the US government has a lot to answer for.
“The version given by Berlusconi and the Italian government is different from that given by the US authorities. In these circumstances the least we expect from the US authorities is at least to say sorry. The appointment of a commission to investigate this incident is the least the Americans can do.” Paternò insists that the Americans were informed that a car carrying Giuliana was on the way to the airport and this shows that “something went wrong.”
During her stay in Iraq Giuliana had interviewed an Iraqi women tortured in Abu Gharib and reported on the US siege in Falluja. In one of her articles Giuliana wrote on the possible use of napalm during the siege of Falluja. Asked to comment on Sgrena’s work in Iraq before she was kidnapped, Paternò says that Giuliana was interviewing refugees from Falluja, a city that had been bombed indiscriminately by the US.
“She was exposing the truth”, Paternò says.
In her own words
Sgrena’s account of that fateful night in Baghdad is the following: “They told me that we were less than a kilometre away... when... I only remember fire. At that point, a rain of fire and bullets hit us, shutting up forever the cheerful voices of a few minutes earlier. The driver started yelling that we were Italians. ‘We are Italians, we are Italians.’ Nicola Calipari threw himself on me to protect me and immediately, I repeat, immediately I heard his last breath as he was dying on me.”
Many questions about the shooting remain unanswered. However, the least likely explanation is the one offered by the US military. According to an initial US statement “a patrol observed the vehicle speeding towards their checkpoint and attempted to warn the driver to stop by hand-and-arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots in front of the car.” When the vehicle failed to stop, the soldiers “shot into the engine block.”
Sgrena, has disputed every element of the US account. According to an Italian official, she told investigators: “We weren’t going very fast, given the circumstances. It was not a checkpoint, but a patrol that started firing right after lighting up a spotlight. The firing was not justified by the movement of our automobile.”
Sgrena stirred controversy when she described the shooting incident as an ambush. Speaking to Sky TG24 news, she raised the possibility that the car had been targeted because Washington did not agree with the methods employed by Italian authorities.
“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. So I can’t see why I should rule out that I could have been the target,” she said.
During last Tuesday’s edition of TV programme Ballarò, Sgrena qualified this statement by saying that she was only describing the dynamics of the attack. When asked whether the US attack was deliberate during the BBC’s Newshour programme Sgrena said: “I can’t say it was deliberate because we can’t say if there was a lack of information. But also a lack of information in this case is their responsibility…The information was given to the Italians to tell the Americans that we were on the road. Now, I can’t say why they shot at us in this way but it’s a very big responsibility.”
Diplomatic feud
US President George Bush immediately rang Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to express his ‘regret’ over the incident.
But Washington immediately sought to deflect blame for the shooting onto Italian authorities by claiming that they had not informed their US counterparts that Sgrena was in a car travelling to the airport.
The incident has soured the relationship between the US and Italy. Berlusconi, a staunch ally of the US in the war in Iraq, told the Italian Senate that the US military had authorised the Italian journey to the airport.
Contradicting the US account Berlusconi said: “A light was flashed at the vehicle from 10m away. The driver at this point stopped the car immediately and at the same time there was gunfire for about 10 or 15 seconds. A few shots reached the vehicle and another one reached and killed Mr Calipari”.
The only consolation for Calipari’s relatives is that the incident will be investigated. On Tuesday US Brigadier General Peter Vangjel was appointed to lead the inquiry on the shooting incident in which Italian officials have been invited to take part.
Many Iraqi victims of similar incidents have long been forgotten. According to the New York Times: “Next to the scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, no other aspect of the American military presence in Iraq has caused such widespread dismay and anger among Iraqis.”
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