A US soldier facing trial in absentia next week in Italy for shooting dead an Italian hostage negotiator and wounding a journalist at a road block in Baghdad has justified the shooting.
Mario Lozano of the US Army’s 69th Infantry Regiment told the New York Post in his first major interview since the 2005 incident that when confronted with the vehicle moving at speed towards his checkpoint he did what any other soldier would have done.
“If you hesitate, you come home in a box – and I didn’t want to come home in a box. I did what any soldier would do in my position,” Lozano said. “You have a warning line, you have a danger line, and you have a kill line,” he explained. “Anyone inside 100 meters (yards) is already in the danger zone ... and you’ve got to take them out.”
Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, held hostage in Iraq for a month, was wounded shortly after her release on March 4, 2005 and security agent Nicola Calipari was killed when US-led coalition forces fired on their car near a military checkpoint in Baghdad.
Sgrena, a reporter for the Rome-based daily Il Manifesto who had been held captive since February 4, was taken to an American military hospital, where she had a minor operation on her left shoulder to remove a piece of shrapnel.
An Italian judge in February this year ordered Lozano to stand trial on homicide charges for shooting Calipari dead. Calipari, who shielded Sgrena during the shooting, was hailed as a hero, awarded Italy’s top bravery award and given a state funeral.
A US inquiry exonerated Lozano, with US authorities saying that Calipari’s car was travelling too fast, had not slowed down and that Italian officials had not told them of the operation to free Sgrena. Italy said that Calipari’s death resulted from a mistake on the part of the US military and that the checkpoint was manned by inexperienced troops.
The agent’s widow, Senator Rosa Calipari, criticised Lozano for talking to the press instead of Italian magistrates, who have been unable to speak to or even locate Lozano despite requests from Rome for judicial cooperation. “There’s a trial. He should come and make his statements at the trial,” she told Reuters.
Lozano told the Post he had done everything to try to make the vehicle stop, from flashing a searchlight — something he said made “every Iraqi slam on the brakes” vo shooting into the ground and then into the vehicle’s engine.
Lozano blamedSgrena for the incident, saying the correspondent had failed to ensure that US forces knew about the vehicle’s whereabouts. “I’m sure her life isn’t like mine,” he said. “She’s famous. Meanwhile, I’ve got to live with the fact that a guy got killed because he didn’t comply with orders and I was that guy who pulled the trigger.”
