Giuliana Sgrena

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Giuliana Sgrena

Giuliana Sgrena (born December 20, 1948 in Masera , Piedmont ) is an Italian journalist . She has been writing for the weekly newspaper Pace e Guerra since 1980, and since 1988 she has been working for the communist daily Il manifesto . Sgrena's articles are also published in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit .

Journalist

Giuliana Sgrena studied in Milan . She began her journalistic work in the early 1970s when the student movement began in Milan. At that time she was involved in groups on the left of the Partito Comunista . From 1980 she wrote for the magazine Pace e guerra ("Peace and War"), for which she reported, among other things, on the protests of the Italian peace movement against the stationing of Pershing missiles on the US base in Comiso , Sicily . Around 1988 Sgrena joined the editorial team of Il Manifesto and since then has mainly reported from the Muslim-Arab world. From there she reported on the Algerian and Somali civil wars, the Gulf War of 1991 and the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan .

Political commitment

In addition to her journalistic work, Sgrena is also directly involved in politics. In the 2009 European elections , she ran for the left-wing electoral alliance Sinistra e Libertà and was involved in the Sinistra Ecologia Libertà party that emerged that same year . In the 2014 European elections , she stood for the party alliance L'Altra Europa con Tsipras . She was unable to win a seat in either election.

She is considered an avowed pacifist . She is also dedicated to the role of women in Islam and has written a book about it.

Kidnapping and Incidents in Iraq

On February 4, 2005, near the University of Baghdad , Sgrena fell into the hands of a hitherto unknown group of kidnappers who were demanding the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq. Many newspapers and organizations around the world campaigned for their release, and the Muslim associations in Germany also took part in the campaign. On February 8, 2005, a false report by a jihadist organization reached the mass media via the Internet that Giuliana Sgrena had been "executed" because she had been "on behalf of the American crusade troops" and "spied on" the resistance fighters in Iraq. In a video message released on February 16, Sgrena tearfully appealed to the Italian government to meet the conditions for their liberation. On February 19, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Italy for their release and called for an end to the Italian military operation in Iraq. Representatives of the Silvio Berlusconi government stayed away from the demonstration .

On March 4, 2005, Sgrena was released by her kidnappers and was supposed to be brought to Baghdad airport and from there to Italy by Italian intelligence officials. According to an unidentified Iraqi MP, a ransom of one million dollars (760,000 euros) was reportedly paid. The Italians' vehicle was shot at by US troops on the way to the airport. Her companion Nicola Calipari was killed, Sgrena herself and two other officers were injured. After treatment at a US military hospital in Baghdad, she landed at Rome airport on March 5, 2005, where she was received in the presence of Prime Minister Berlusconi and with great sympathy. Paramedics helped her off the plane and took her to a military hospital for further treatment.

Investigations and opinions

The reasons for the bombardment of the vehicle could only be roughly clarified, as the site was cleared immediately because of the danger and no precise reconstruction was carried out. The published research report shows that there was a high degree of nervousness on both sides. The US soldiers were very tense because the route was considered extremely dangerous and they had to maintain the temporarily set up and only provisionally secured control post longer than planned due to communication problems. Conversely, it can be assumed that the driver of Sgrena's car knew about the dangerousness of the route and that stopping at an unknown checkpoint would represent a high risk for him. In the investigation report in PDF format , it was actually possible to make blacked-out background information visible again, according to which the dangerousness of the road at that time was higher than should be published.

The publication of the information, which was actually classified as secret, showed that electronic redacting may not be a reliable protection of information, among other things, the names of the soldiers involved could be read in plain text. Due to the popularity of the case - especially in Italy - both sides tried to blame the other side on a political level: According to the US military, the car did not respond to a request to stop at a checkpoint. After several warnings, the fire was opened. According to an unnamed soldier, the car was up to 100 mph (160 km / h) when the fire started.

Sgrena himself contradicted this presentation on March 6, 2005. She testified that the car "did not go too fast" and that the soldiers "may have intentionally" shot her. According to her testimony, her kidnappers had warned her to be “extremely careful” because “the Americans do not want you to return”. Ms. Sgrena told the Al-Jazeera news channel that she was an American target as the US government refuses to negotiate hostage release with its war opponents. Pier Scolari, Sgrena's partner, had previously pointed out that the vehicle was only 700 meters from the airport in Baghdad when the US soldiers fired - "they had already passed all the controls". The Italian Presidential Council followed the incident live because he phoned one of the Italian secret service employees in the car. "Then the American military confiscated the cell phones and turned them off." According to an internal paper of the Pentagon, the dangerousness of the road was pointed out in advance. “It's war,” says the memo. “Around 500 US soldiers were killed while on duty on Iraqi roads. […] No agreement has been reached with the US Army about a safe passage for Giuliana Sgrena. ”Former US officer and military expert Robert Maginnis told the Washington Times :

“It seems to me that Italian intelligence is viewing this as a James Bond film in Baghdad. They drive around in the evening and take a kidnapped journalist with them and think they could drive through a phalanx of checkpoints on the most dangerous road in Iraq without being seen or shot at. "

- vienna.at

The preliminary results of the investigation by the Italian authorities also contradicted the information provided by the American military. Vice Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini said on March 8th that the car had driven at around 70 km / h and had to brake shortly before the point where the shooting occurred because of a curve, so it could have been a maximum of 40 km / h . When the Italian's car was in the bend, a strong, headlamp-like light came on about ten meters away. "During the braking maneuver that followed and the car came to a standstill almost immediately, several automatic weapons were fired for about 10-15 seconds," said Fini, whose statements are mainly based on the driver's statement. Giuliana Sgrena had put it in Corriere della Sera as follows: "A rain of bullets and fire fell on us." Immediately after the shots, however, after they realized that they were Italians, the US soldiers had the driver, one of them SISMI agents, sorry. A US checkpoint, as shown by the US side, does not exist there. Fini assumes an unfortunate chain that led to the incident. Initial photos of the car revealed that the car had eight bullet holes, mostly in the tires and the lower part of the chassis.

Sgrena on March 9 denied claims that she was suspected of deliberate fire, but added:

“I'm outraged that this is called an accident. If they gave us signs and we hadn't understood them, then one could speak of an accident. But if people just shoot at it, then you can't speak of an accident, can you? [...] I don't think that the shelling of our car was directed against me personally. "

- The standard

According to US embassy spokesman Robert Callahan, the mobile barrier on the way to the airport was set up on March 10 to protect the American ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte , because "Negroponte wanted to drive this route or had already used it". ( 20min.ch ) The units responsible for Negropontes protection would have to "ensure that his route is free in all directions". ( The standard )

In an interview with Corriere della Sera published on Friday March 11th, Giuliana Sgrena said:

“I have no confidence in the investigation, you know that it will not lead to any results. […] There was no stop signal, nobody shot in the air as a warning. Not the engine of the car, but the windows of the vehicle were shot. "

- The standard

Sgrena also said there were "no lights" and that the shots came "not from the front, but from the side and behind". The Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini also declared in parliament at the beginning of the week that pictures of the shot at vehicle showed that it had been hit “from the side”. Sgrena spoke of "300-400 rounds" that were fired from a "tank" on the car. According to the Pittsburg Post-Gazette , there is "only one bullet hole in the windshield". The "other windows, the fenders and also the hood" are "intact".

The Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli then criticized Ms. Sgrena on March 12th for causing difficulties for the government in Rome: “She speaks and acts rashly.” ( Neue Zürcher Zeitung )

Consequences

General George W. Casey Jr. , Commander in Chief of the Alliance Forces in Iraq, announced that he would review the rules of engagement for his US troops. So far, these rules allow US soldiers to shoot at their own discretion at any time. An American commission of inquiry is investigating the incident with Italian participation. ( 123recht.net )

Sgrena has hired a law firm in Bologna to represent her interests in the investigation into the manslaughter of the shot agent Nicola Calipari. After her release, she campaigned for the release of French reporter colleague Florence Aubenas and her interpreter Hussein Hanun el Dschundi. ( boa )

Around three weeks after the shooting at journalist Giuliana Sgrena's car in Iraq, Justice Minister Roberto Castelli sent a written, official request to Washington to open the vehicle for an investigation, as the US armed forces have so far denied Italian investigators access to the car. An examination of the car is essential for an assessment of the events of March 4th.

According to a report on US television broadcaster CNN on April 26, 2005, the American soldiers who shot at Sgrena's car and killed the Italian agent Nicola Calipari will no longer be accused or disciplined against them as a result of a military investigation into the incident. According to the American military report, the Italians' car drove far too fast, did not respond to the first request to stop, the American patrol feared a suicide attack and the Italians had left the Americans in the dark about the release of the hostage "until the accident". An American officer at Baghdad airport, who had begun to suspect the reason for their presence due to the entry of two Italian intelligence officials, was even ordered by an Italian general not to talk to anyone about why the American officer had not notified any checkpoints. Sgrena described this report as an "unacceptable slap in the face for Italy" and charged the American Military Commission with having taken steps backwards in clearing up the case. As an example, she cited that the “theory of tragic error” no longer appears in the report. For its part, the Italian state side submitted a report on the fatal incident in which the Italian military secret service tried point by point to refute the American arguments. It criticizes the fact that the incident was not properly investigated, and that an investigation was made impossible because the course of the road was changed immediately after the fatal shots and the crime scene was cleared of all evidence by American authorities "during the night". Two months after the event, the American military made the vehicle, which had been confiscated up until then, available to the Italian side for investigation purposes. On March 4, it was not fired at the engine, as is usual with suicide bombers, but through the side windows into the passenger compartment.

A year after the kidnapping, the American armed forces announced the arrest of the alleged kidnapper Mohammed Ubeidi.

Trials against Mario Lozano, the soldier who killed the Italian agent, were opened in absentia in Rome in April 2007 and resumed after an interruption in October of the same year. A little later the proceedings against Lozano were dropped because the Italian court did not have jurisdiction.

Media coverage

Some media portrayed the process as a targeted attack by the US on the hostage, which may be intended to prevent other governments and non-governmental organizations ( NGOs ) from trying to free their hostages through negotiation.

“Because of the kidnappings and cruel executions, free reporting in Iraq is currently impossible. According to the International Federation of Journalists, 70 journalists and media members have been killed in Iraq for two years. "

- netzeitung.de

publication

In 2005 Sgrena's book “Fuoco Amico” was published by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, in 2006 as “Friendly Fire. As a hostage between the fronts ”at Ullstein. It not only deals with Sgrena's abduction, hostage detention and release, but also reports on the current situation in Iraq and in Fallujah in particular .

Quotes

  • “With me everyone knows what he is about. I do not hide anything and I do not avoid any arguments. "( Die Zeit )
  • "I never saw the kidnappers as enemies." ( Corriere della Sera )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Giuliana Sgrena candidata per Tsipras, minacce e insulti su Facebook: "Guardati le spalle". La Repubblica , May 21, 2014, accessed March 12, 2018 (Italian).
  2. ↑ Iraq: kidnappers of Giuliana Sgrena arrested. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 6, 2006, accessed on March 12, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Trial of US soldier Lozano resumed in Rome. Der Standard , October 15, 2007, accessed March 12, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Italians 'cannot try US soldier'. BBC News , October 25, 2007, accessed March 12, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Il racconto della giornalista rilasciata "I miei rapitori? May considerati nemici ». corriere.it, March 8, 2005, accessed March 12, 2018 (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Sgrena, Giuliana
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian journalist
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Masera , Piedmont