After 19 updates to this thread of posts, and over a year of no news, comes this:
Italian prosecutors have called for a US soldier to stand trial for the killing of an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad in 2005.
Nicola Calipari, 51, was shot dead at a US roadblock while escorting Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who had been released by kidnappers in Iraq.
Italy and the US government disputed the circumstances of his death.
Italian prosecutors want a US marine, identified as Mario Lozano, to go on trial for the March 2005 killing.
Last week Mr Lozano’s court-appointed lawyer, Fabrizio Cardinali, said he expected his client to be tried in absentia for murder and attempted murder.
The Italian version of events, which differs from the US version, stated the following:
The inexperience of U.S. troops and a lack of signals at a makeshift roadblock in Baghdad contributed to the shooting death of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq, a report by Italian military and diplomatic officials said.
The officials, who helped investigate the March 4 shooting of Nicola Calipari, disputed U.S. findings that the car in which he was riding was traveling at 100 kilometers an hour and failed to heed warning shots and a spotlight on the car. Calipari, 51, was headed to the Baghdad airport with freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist wounded in the shooting.
“The level of stress and inexperience may have led these soldiers to react in an instinctive way with little control,” said the report posted on the Web site of Italy’s intelligence agency. The driver “was not in a hurry to reach the airport. The road was wet and he was heading into a curved ramp that was partially obstructed and that led to a 90 degree curve.”
So say the Italian version is correct, which I do not believe, but lets just say it is. How in the world can they come to the conclusion that the soldier deliberately wanted to kill Calipari? He had malice aforethought and set out that day to kill the Italian…or so the Italians believe now.
One more reason why this series of posts is titled the way it is. True idiots one and all.
You can see the 20 some odd posts I did on this incident by clicking on the Calipari Shooting catagory.
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