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THE ROVING EYE
They shoot
journalists, don't they?
By
Pepe Escobar
Many uncomfortable,
unanswered questions remain over the killing on
March 4 of Italian secret intelligence agent
Nicola Calipari by American soldiers near Baghdad
airport, immediately after Calipari had negotiated
the release of Giuliana Sgrena, the unembedded
correspondent from Il Manifesto, a communist
Italian daily, who had been held hostage for one
month and was wounded in the US firing.
On Monday, a report leaked
to Reuters and Agence France-Presse correspondents at
the Pentagon, in the afternoon (dead of night in
Europe, to prevent major reaction), quoted unnamed
army sources as saying
that an investigation had cleared US soldiers of
any wrongdoing.
According to the leak,
American soldiers followed rules of engagement to
the letter and therefore were not to blame. The
Pentagon ruled that its soldiers used hand and arm
signals, flashed white lights and fired warning
shots to try to stop the Toyota Corolla carrying
Sgrena and Calipari, which was "speeding" toward
"a checkpoint". The soldiers then shot into the
Toyota's engine block when the driver did not
stop. Calipari was not part of the engine block,
but he was shot anyway: a "horrible accident".
The driver of the car
has insisted that the Toyota had been driving slowly
(no more than 40km/h), and had received no
warning from the American soldiers, and that the
Italians had advised the Americans they were
carrying diplomatic personnel.
In
Washington,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General
Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs
of Staff, said on Tuesday that Italian
officials who participated in the investigation
had not signed off on the report's conclusions.
They provided no details about the report. "My
latest information is that they have not come to a
final agreement on a joint report," Rumsfeld said
of US and Italian investigators.
In an
interview by the Tg3 newscast in Italy on Monday
night, Sgrena said: "It seems to me that in this
way the Italians are to be blamed for everything,
and this is also a slap in the face of the Italian
government."
What really happened
The Sgrena case - or hit, as many Italians put
it - has convulsed a country overwhelmingly
against the war on Iraq, not only because of the
tragic death of Calipari but because it has
revealed in graphic detail to Italians and
Europeans the grim reality faced by ordinary
Iraqis, Sunni or Shi'ite. Iraqi civilians are now
kidnapped by the hundreds. Iraqi civilians are
routinely shot at by young, nervous American
soldiers at checkpoints - as any correspondent who
has covered Iraq knows so well. Iraqi civilian
deaths are not even acknowledged by the Pentagon
(remember Myers: "We don't do body counts").
Independent journalist Naomi Klein had
a long conversation with Sgrena - hit by a
four-inch (10-centimeter) bullet that injured her shoulder and punctured
her lung - when she was still convalescing at a
Rome military hospital after returning to Italy on
March 5. Klein then gave an extensive interview to
Democracy Now! about the meeting. To start with,
Sgrena affirms she was not traveling on the road
the Pentagon says she was. And there was no US
checkpoint ordering them to slow down.
Sgrena says she was on a secure road
- used by diplomats and US officials - that comes
straight from the Green Zone in central Baghdad.
Saddam Hussein used this road to go from his top
presidential palace straight to the then-named
Saddam International Airport. This is a secured
road connecting the Green Zone with the huge Camp
Victory military base attached to Baghdad's
airport. Sgrena told Klein, "I was only able to be
on that road because I was with people from the
Italian Embassy." This explains why Sgrena
"thought we were finally safe, because the area
where we were was under the control of the United
States".
Anybody who has covered the Iraq
war has known - or has seen - checkpoint hell,
where nervous American soldiers fire on anything
that moves. The Toyota Corolla with Calipari and
Sgrena was hit by only between eight and 10
rounds. Both Calipari and Sgrena were sitting in
the back seat. Calipari was hit by a direct shot
in the temple.
There was no checkpoint,
Sgrena told Klein. "It was simply a tank parked on
the side of the road that opened fire on us. It
was not a checkpoint. They didn't try to stop us,
they just shot us. They have a way to signal us to
stop, but they didn't give us any signals to stop
and they were at least 10 meters off the street to
the side."
The crucial part is that Sgrena
says the Toyota was shot from behind - which
contradicts the Pentagon version of soldiers
shooting in self-defense. According to Klein,
"Sgrena really stressed that the bullet that
injured her so badly came from behind, entered
through the back of the car. And the only person
who was not severely injured in the car was the
driver, and she said that this is because the
shots weren't coming from the front ... They were
driving away."
This might explain why the
Pentagon apparently blocked the Italian government
from inspecting the Toyota, even though the
Italian government had bought the car from the
rental agency after the shooting.
Sgrena
is 100% sure: "It was not self-defense. The
soldiers were to the right of us on the side of
the road, they started to shoot from the right and
kept shooting from behind. Most of the shots came
from behind. Calipari was shot from the right and
I was shot in the shoulder from behind. When we
stopped, they were behind us. We could see that
all the back windows of the car were broken from
behind ... They didn't try to stop the car and
they shot at least 10 bullets at the level of
people sitting inside the car. If Calipari had not
pushed me down they could have killed me."
Calipari was a top agent and leading Middle East negotiator working for
Sismi (Servizio per le Informazioni e la
Sicurezza Militare), the Italian equivalent of the
US Central Intelligence Agency. He had already refused the idea
of a raid by the US Delta Force ("too
dangerous") to rescue Sgrena. He went the negotiation route
- and he secured Sgrena's release,
in all probability, according to reports, via an
US$8 million ransom paid in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
(the Silvio Berlusconi government in Italy denies
it). The Bush administration, as is well known, does
not negotiate with "terrorists".
Calipari
had also a few months ago negotiated the freedom
of the so-called two Simonas, Simona Torretta and
Simona Pari. When they came back to Italy, the two
Simonas not only denounced the US
occupation, but praised the Iraqi resistance. Not
exactly a popular script in Washington.
You report, we decide
The Foxification of US - and global - media
has a corollary: the Pentagon considers
independent journalism an act of subversion. An
investigation by the Paris-based Reporters Without
Borders has reached the same conclusions. Most
covering the war on Iraq remember how the Pentagon
intentionally targeted the media-saturated
Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on April 8, 2003,
killing a Ukrainian and a Spanish journalist. Four
months later, the US Army absolved itself from any
possible mistake. Eason Jordan, a top CNN
executive for more than a decade, was forced to
resign after saying that the Pentagon targeted
journalists in Iraq. As far as the Sgrena tragedy
is concerned, Reporters Without Borders has called
for a UN-led independent investigation - to no
avail.
Ann Cooper, executive
director of the New York-based Committee
to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said, "We are deeply
troubled by the reported disagreement between US
and Italian officials." The CPJ calls for "a
thorough and credible investigation to determine
what happened, who is responsible, and what steps are
being taken to prevent similar incidents from
occurring again in the future". The CPJ
has conclusively determined that at least nine journalists
and two media workers have been killed by the US military
in Iraq since March 2003. At least four
journalists were killed at checkpoints.
The Berlusconi government at first said the Pentagon had
not been fully briefed on the Italian
negotiations to liberate Sgrena. Then Gianfranco Fini,
the Italian foreign minister, was forced
to acknowledge "differences" between the US and Italian
versions. Fini admitted that Calipari was issued
US military passes and was in contact
with the US military leadership. But he refused the
possibility of an ambush as "nonsense". On the
night of the shooting, according to Fini,
the US military knew about the Toyota (the Pentagon
says no) because it had been informed by the top
local Italian liaison official, General Mario
Marioli. But the military didn't know the car was carrying
Sgrena, Fini said.
The joy of
absolution
There may be endless
speculation over the circumstances surrounding the
death of Nicola Calipari. But there are two things
the case has accomplished. 1) The Berlusconi
government is now toeing the Bush line: there will
be no negotiations to liberate any possible
future Italian hostage. 2) For any independent
journalists, Iraq is now the ultimate minefield.
It's virtually impossible to guarantee the safety
of any non-embedded journalist, so that means no
independent reporting.
Once the report is
officially released, absolving the US military of
any wrongdoing, one can expect the matter to end
there, certainly as far as the US and
Italian mainstream media are concerned, and the
Pentagon will proceed with its occupation of Iraq,
far from prying eyes.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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