US Slaps Italy

gilgamesh

20 years ago

cross-posted at Daily Kos and New European Times

The joint US/Italian commision investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Nicola Calipari, the SISMI agent awared a Gold Medal by the Italian governement for saving the life of journalist Giuiliana Sgrena, has concluded with the complete absolution of US troops and a shifting of the responsibility for the incident onto Nicola Calipari himself.

Guiliana Sgrena’s reaction is sharp and unambiguous:

It’s a slap in the face of the Italian governement and all Italians. It’s even less than I expected, because at the begging at least the versions given in the heat of the moment by the uS command pointed toward an accident. Now, instead, they’re no longer even talking about an accident, they want to pin the whole blame on the Italians

According to l’Unità, Sgrena also observed:

I saw the faces of those who fired at me, however I woudn’t be satisfied to see the individual soldiers who fired punished because I think the reponsibility [for the incident] goes up higher. They killed one of the top Italian intelligence agents and they must be held accountable for that.

According to the report, the soldiers at the check-point who fired “are not guilty” because “they applied the rules” given to them.

No doubt they did follow the rules. But what exactly were these rules and how many other human lives have been annihilited because of them?

Also according to l’Unità:

Italy does not accept the results of the inquiry as they are being illustrated by military sources in the Pentagon. The Italian and American versions diverge on some specific points: on the velocity of the vehicle in which Calipari and Sgrena were traveling, which according to the Italians was moderate and accordin to the Americans was high; and on the communications exchanged between the the two sides before the tragic incident, i.e. about who was informed by whom about what.

According to La Repubblica, the formalization of the Italian government’s dissenting opinion from the joint commision’s conlusio wil take place tommorow bewteen Ambassor Mel Sembler and a representative of the Italian Foreign Ministry.

The commison’s final report will represent one of the first serious challenges for the newly-installed Berlusconi government to confront after the recent parliamantery crisis and the collapse of the center-right coalition in the regional elections. Popular opinion and the media will almost certainly demanding an independent investigation conducted under the auspices of Italian magistrates in Rome. To what extent such an investigation can be carried out meaningfully without the cooperation of Washington remains to be seen.

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