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Journalism of Courage
Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena arrived in Rome on Saturday, hours after American troops in Iraq fired on the car she was in, wounding her and killing an Italian intelligence officer.
A plane carrying Sgrena back from Iraq landed at Rome’s Ciampino airport, where Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was on hand to welcome her. The 57-year-old award-winning reporter was carried off the aircraft and put into an ambulance bound for a military clinic for an operation on her collarbone.
Sgrena, who had been held hostage in Iraq for more than a month, was freed on Friday. She was handed over to three Italian security agents, but was wounded when US forces opened fire on her car as it approached Baghdad airport.
Sgrena described on Saturday how US forces sprayed her car with bullets. ‘‘We thought the danger was over after my release to the Italians but all of a sudden there was this shoot-out, we were hit by a barrage of bullets,’’ she told Rai TV by telephone.
Nicola Calipari, the senior secret service agent who had worked for her release, was telling her about what had been going on in Italy when the shooting started. ‘‘He leaned over me, probably to protect me, and then he slumped down, and I saw he was dead,’’ said Sgrena.
She told colleagues from her newspaper Il Manifesto that her captors ‘‘never treated me badly’’, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
‘‘Giuliana is relatively well,’’ Sgrena’s partner, Pier Scolari, told ANSA. ‘‘The hardest moment was when I saw the person who had saved me die in my arms,’’ Scolari quoted her as saying on her flight back to Rome.
Scolari said he could not blame the US soldiers for the shooting, as they were probably ‘‘scared boys’’, but the real blame lay with those who had sent them to Iraq.
Berlusconi put on a brave face but leading newspaper Corriere della Sera cited political sources as saying he was furious. Even President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose role is largely ceremonial and who usually stays above the political fray, on Saturday demanded an explanation: ‘‘Like all Italians, I am waiting for the US to clear up this painful and tragic episode.”
Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini called Calipari’s death ‘‘a tragedy of destiny’’ and hoped it would cause no anti-American feeling in Italy.
US President George W. Bush has promised a full investigation into the shooting. Berlusconi summoned US Ambassador Mel Sembler and demanded a full investigation, and took a telephone call from Bush, who expressed his regrets.
‘‘The President assured the Prime Minister that it would be fully investigated … We’re cooperating closely with Italian authorities,’’ said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Meanwhile, Paris-based journalists’ rights panel, Reporters Sans Frontieres asked the UN to conduct an urgent probe into the incident.
