The shooting was a murder attempt against me. Americans wanted to kill me, not stop the car. 58 bullets were found in the passengers and only one bullet in the engine of the car," says Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena. March 2005American soldiers shot in Bagdad towards the car where she was travelling with two Italian intelligence agents. Sgrena was seriously injured and agent Nicola Calipari died immediately.
Journalist of Il Manifesto, Mrs Giuliana Sgrena, was kidnapped in Falluja February 2005 by a group who called themselves "Mujahedins without boarders". She was released one month later. The shooting occurred in an area controlled by Americans near Bagdad airport. Americans say that it was an accident.
Italian criminal investigations found out that the speech of the car was not too fast as Americans have claimed. Criminal trial against the shooter, American soldier Mario Lozano, will start next spring in Rome. The prosecution was announced the 7th February 2007. Lozano is not expected to arrive to the trial. Pentagon does not send their soldiers abroad for trials, what ever crimes they have done. Sgrena says that Lozano is only the last person in the attack against her and it would be important to find out all the persons involved in it. If the Italian court judges Lozano the penalty will not be valid in United States. The only consequence of killing Calipari will be for the shooter that he can not visit Italy. But for president Bush the consequence is that critics against Iraq war has increased in Italy, as well as the demands to remove Italian soldiers from there.
What did Giuliana Sgrena know about the war which is so dangerous for America? She denies herself having such information. But Sgrena was one of the first persons to tell that Americans use napalm and white phosphore in the war. First America denied the claims but now it says this is true.
After recovering the shooting Giuliana Sgrena wrote a book “Fuoco Amigo” (“Friendly Fire”). The book is translated to Finnish. This is the reason Sgrena came to Finland. I went to Sgrena’s press conference the 9th February in Helsinki. Sgrena's opinions about the future of Iraq are pessimistic: the only change how Iraqi people can solve the crisis is that America removes their troops despite it looks evident that it will first lead to a bigger chaos. Giuliana Sgrena says that the civil war has already started in Iraq. Very many people die every day. European mass media tells about car bombs but not about civilian victims who are shot every day the same way as she: in friendly fire by Americans.
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