On June 19 prosecutors requested the indictment of Mario Lozano, a member of the US National Guard, over the murder of Nicola Calipari. Calipari was killed in Iraq in March last year when at least one soldier at a US checkpoint opened fire on the car carrying Calipari and Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist who had been held hostage by Iraqi rebels. If Lozano isn’t extradited to face trial, Italian law allows him to be tried in absentia. US officials claim that the car was travelling at high speed and failed to stop at a checkpoint, but according to Sgrena the car stopped immediately when US troops waved it down. Sgrena had been investigating US atrocities in Fallujah. In an article for Il Manifesto after her release, Sgrena wrote that her Iraqi captors had warned her the US may try to prevent her leaving Iraq alive: “[My kidnappers] declared that they were committed to the fullest to freeing me but I had to be careful, 'the Americans don't want you to go back’.”

From Green Left Weekly, June 28, 2006.
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