Giuliana Sgrena to Appeal Ruling Dismissing Trial Against U.S. Soldier Accused of Shooting Her and Killing an Italian Intelligence Officer in Iraq

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"An Italian court has dismissed the trial of a U.S. soldier accused in the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq. Specialist Mario Lozano of the New York National Guard allegedly shot Nicola Calipari as he escorted the then-newly freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to the airport in March of 2005.

The Bush administration has refused to hand over Lozano so prosecutors sought to try him in absentia. But last week an Italian judge ruled Italy has no jurisdiction to pursue the case and threw out the charges......

We go now to Rome, where I'm joined by Giuliana Sgrena, veteran foreign correspondent for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto. She wrote about the incident in her book "Friendly Fire: The Remarkable Story of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq, Rescued by an Italian Secret Service Agent, and Shot by U.S. Forces.".....

GIULIANA SGRENA: I am really disappointed for the decision of the Italian court about the Lozano case, because they decided that Italy has no jurisdiction to put on trial Lozano. And this decision is based on a letter, a Colin Powell letter, that’s attached to the resolution -- UN resolution. But it is a unilateral letter that was not accepted by other governments. So, also the prosecutors and our lawyers found that this is not a base to avoid our sovereignty on the Calipari case......

GIULIANA SGRENA: Oh, it’s not true. I was just doing my work, and many other journalists went to interview the refugees, the refugees of Fallujah. Me, I usually go to interview the refugees, because I think that it’s the people that more suffer for the situation. And also, in this case, I went there just to interview these refugees.

I know that for military, army, it’s not the case to go around and to do an independent work, because they want the journalists just to be embedded, but I can say that in the same day, the same moment that I was there doing to interview the refugees of Fallujah, there was also a photographer working for the US Time taking pictures there. So I was not doing a work with terrorists, because if not everybody work with terrorists. I was just there to interview refugees......."