Italian Agent killed by US forces

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U.S. Forces Kill Italian Agent after Reporter Freed
    Reuters

    Friday 04 March 2005

    Rome - U.S. forces fired at a car carrying Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena shortly after her liberation, killing an Italian secret service agent and lightly wounding the journalist, her newspaper said on Friday.

    Gabriele Polo, the editor of Il Manifesto newspaper, said Sgrena's car was fired on as it made its way to Baghdad airport.

    "This news which should have be a moment of celebration, has been ruined by this fire fight," Polo told Sky Italia television.

    "An Italian agent has been killed by an American bullet. A tragic demonstration which we never wanted that everything that's happening in Iraq is completely senseless and mad," he added, struggling to fight back his tears.

    The Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi sent his condolences to the family of the dead agent, who was named by Il Manifesto's Polo as Nicola Calipari.

    Sgrena was seized in the Iraqi capital on Feb. 4 as she conducted interviews on the street near Baghdad University.

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Slain agent was seasoned negotiator

Nicola Calipari was shielding former hostage Giuliana Sgrena when he was killed[/size]


ROME, Italy (AP) -- Veteran Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari -- who won the freedom of captive journalist Giuliana Sgrena -- was a practiced hostage negotiator who had already helped bring home two Italians kidnapped in Iraq.[/b][/size]

At least once before, Calipari reportedly had come close to negotiating Sgrena's release.

He had gone to Baghdad once before, convinced he would leave with the 56-year-old writer for the left-wing newspaper Il Manifesto, but left empty-handed, according to the news agency ANSA.

It finally happened Friday, when Sgrena was handed over to Italian officials after a month of captivity in the hands of Iraqi insurgents. But the happy occasion quickly turned sour when the car taking Sgrena, Calipari and other agents to the Baghdad airport was fired upon at a U.S. checkpoint.

Calipari was killed as he threw his body across Sgrena, in what she said was an attempt to shield her from the bullets.

Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi awarded Calipari with the gold medal of valor Saturday for his heroism.

Across Italy, fans observed a moment of silence in tribute to the agent before the kickoff at soccer games.

"He was an extraordinary man. Getting to know him, I became certain that Giuliana would come home," Sgrena's boyfriend Pier Scolari told ANSA.

Sgrena was abducted February 4 by gunmen who blocked her car outside Baghdad University.

News of Calipari's death brought grief to other former hostages and their relatives.

"Nicola Calipari was a beautiful person, a simple person. He was the person who freed me," Simona Torretta told ANSA on Friday as she left the home of Calipari, where she had gone to pay her respects and meet with his family.

The aid worker was held hostage in Iraq for three weeks with her colleague, Simona Pari, before Calipari negotiated her release September 28.

"We are very sorry, we owe these people so much," said Pari's father, Luciano Pari. "He's a person who worked very well."

Minister of the interior Giuseppe Pisanu visited Calipari's home to express his condolences and described the agent as "the most true and human hero of this tormented story."

Calipari, 50, was married and had a 19-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son.

He originally was from the southern city of Reggio-Calabria in the toe of Italy across from Sicily, but had never worked there.

He was a 20-year veteran of the police force, and before moving on to Italy's secret services he had headed the immigration office for Rome's police.
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www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200503/s1318068.htm

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Italian agent was killed by a security detail assigned to new US NID chief:

Calipari’s team -- or someone they talked to -- might have told the Americans what was going on, and the usual checkpoints were notified that they were coming, and to wave them through. But I'd also be willing to bet that the 'checkpoint' that shot them wasn't really a checkpoint, but some makeshift thing that was part of a sweep of insurgents, or some VIP’s security detail.”

According to a U.S. military source quoted in Monday’s Washington Post, this appears to have been along the lines of what happened. But as of Tuesday morning, more details weren’t necessarily leading to greater clarity: While The Washington Times cited a leaked Pentagon memo saying that Calipari had failed to liaise with Americans, Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini asserted that Calipari had in fact ''made all the necessary contacts with the U.S. authorities,'' and essentially said that the U.S. account of a speeding car and soldiers endeavoring to warn the car didn’t hold water. (CNN, meanwhile, was reporting that the fatal checkpoint was in fact an ad hoc affair, set up on account of U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte’s movements.)

www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9296