Free Republic

Italian Woman, Kidnapped by Muslim Terrorists, Converts to Islam and Returns to Rome JUN 6, 2020 10:00 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD When Silvia Romano was freed from her 18-month captivity in the hands of al-Shebaab, after the payment of a large ransom by the Italian government to her captors, she arrived in Rome to be welcomed as a returning hero. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister were both at the airport to greet her. There was one loud dissenting voice, from a member of Parliament, Alessandro Pagano, who derided Romano as a “neo-terrorist.” This horrified many of the Great...

ROME - A judge Wednesday ordered a U.S. soldier to stand trial in absentia for the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Baghdad, the prosecutor said. Spc. Mario Lozano is indicted for murder and attempted murder in the death of Nicola Calipari, who was shot on March 4, 2005, on his way to the Baghdad airport shortly after securing the release of an Italian journalist who had been kidnapped in the Iraqi capital, prosecutor Pietro Saviotti said. Another agent, who was driving the car, and the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, were wounded. "This looks to me...

CALIPARI: A 'KIDNAPPERS' TRAP' KILLED HIM? (AGI) - Rome, 29 March - Could it have been a 'trap' of the journalist Giuliana Sgrena's kidnappers that killed the secret service man Nicola Calipari, who was in the car hit at a US checkpoint on 4 March last year, while travelling to Baghdad airport. This, according to Corriere della Sera this morning, is the version offered by a terrorist, Mustafa Mohammed Salman, currently imprisoned in Iraq, according to whom it was the Imam of the Sunnite mosque, the sheik Hussein (who Sgrena was supposed to meet with the day she was...

Italian media have published classified sections of an official US military inquiry into the accidental killing of an Italian agent in Baghdad. The 40-page report was censored by the Pentagon before being officially published on Saturday. Italy has refused to accept the US report's findings and is to publish its own version of events later this week. Details of the official report were published in newspapers on Sunday with censored material restored in full. Missing text A Greek medical student at Bologna University who was surfing the web early on Sunday found that with two simple clicks of his computer...

Readers 'declassify' US document When news started circulating in Italy that a heavily censored Pentagon report into the death of secret agent Nicola Calipari had been decrypted, many thought it must be the work of some top-notch hacker. In fact, it turned out that the classified document, containing top-secret details - such as the name of the soldier who fired the deadly rounds of ammunition - could be made readable with two simple clicks of your computer mouse. A few hours after the Pentagon published the report on its website, a few Italian readers found they could make the blacked-out...

Gianfranco Fini, the Italian Foreign Minister, increased a diplomatic row with the United States today by demanding that Washington identify and punish those responsible for the shooting of Rome’s top intelligence agent in Iraq. Signor Fini dismissed the American version that a lack of communication was responsible for the death of Nicola Calipari, who died in a hail of gunfire from US troops as he escorted a freed Italian hostage to Baghdad airport on Friday. Signor Calipari had made "all the necessary contacts" with US authorities in Baghdad, the minister said. In his account to parliament of the shooting, which...

A senior U.S. military official tells ABC News he believes the investigation into the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence officer by U.S. troops in Iraq will ultimately prove the officer's car was traveling in excess of 100 mph. The car, which was carrying a newly released Italian hostage to freedom, came under fire from U.S. troops at a checkpoint Friday. Intelligence officer Nicola Calipari was hit by a bullet and killed as he threw himself in front of the freed hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena. Sgrena and another intelligence officer were wounded. The shooting has outraged Italians, who mourned Calipari...

In an Italy under shock at the death of Nicola Calipari, emotions are prompting people to say and write many things that perhaps in a few days may look overstated, if not embarrassing. Of course, the writer is the first to understand, and up to a point even share, what lies behind those emotions. Take the anguish of Giuliana Sgrena, abducted by the very people she thought she was defending. For one month, she was a hostage to fear and the unknown, then only one step away from death, saved at the last by the sacrifice of one of the...

Italian security forces failed to make arrangements for safe passage out of Iraq for a freed Italian reporter, whose car was fired on by U.S. troops, killing intelligence agent Nicola Calipari who brokered the reporter's release, according to an internal Pentagon memo. The memo says checkpoint soldiers are trained to deal with erratic speeding vehicles whose drivers ignored warnings -- a profile that matches the Army's version of events in Friday night's shooting. The memo says more than 500 American troops have been killed on the streets and at checkpoints in Iraq. Mistaken shootings of civilians resulted in "few deadly...