A United States soldier facing possible charges of murdering an Italian secret agent in Iraq has reportedly said he would not be capable of such an act. Speaking to the New York Daily News, fellow soldier Staff Sgt.Edwin Feliciano quoted Mario Lozano as saying: "I could never intentionally hurt anyone like that".
Feliciano, 38, told the NY daily Lozano was "devastated" after the incident and could not sleep for days.
A preliminary hearing will be set over the next few days to rule on the request to indict Lozano, 35.
Lozano is suspected of firing on an Italian car carrying Italian Military Intelligence Service (SISMI) officer Nicola Calipari and a released hostage to Baghdad airport on March 4, 2005. Calipari died shielding hostage Giuliana Sgrena, who was
slightly wounded. A Carabinieri officer was also wounded.
As well as homicide, the indictment request cites attempted double homicide on the part of Lozano, whose current whereabouts are unknown. Calipari was declared a national hero on the anniversary of his death, which was proclaimed SISMI day.
Lozano's friends told the NY daily they would have been "honoured" to have rescued Sgrena themselves. The Rome prosecutors argue the case is "political" because several agents of the Italian state are involved. This means, in the case of an indictment, that Lozano can be tried in absentia.
The Calipari case has strained relations with the US - already tense because of Milan charges against CIA agents for taking a Muslim cleric to Egypt for alleged torture. The US has refused to fully cooperate with the Italian probe into the 'friendly fire' shooting. In May the US said it would not give Italy the names of the soldiers manning the roadblock along the so-called
Route Irish from Baghdad city centre to the airport.
The justice department said this was its final word on the subject.
On his first trip to Washington at the weekend, Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema could not get the US to budge on the case.
Washington has cleared its troops of any wrongdoing but refused to provide Italy with full details of its investigation.
Lozano was initially identified thanks to a youth in Bologna who used his computer savvy to uncover the soldier's name which had been blacked out in an unprecedented US-Italian joint report on the incident. Lozano was later found to be a resident of the Bronx in New York city, a father of two grade-school girls and a member of the Fighting 69th Infantry Division.
The US-Italian joint investigation failed to reach an agreed conclusion, with the American members clearing the soldiers of all responsibility and the Italians blaming the US's organisation of the roadblock. The Toyota Corolla in which Calipari and the other two were travelling came under fire from a temporary roadblock manned by ten US soldiers on their first day of service.
Ballistic evidence gathered from the car by Italian experts indicated that only one weapon had been used but that it had fired three separate rounds of machine gun fire. This led Rome investigators to conclude that it was the intention of the person firing the gun to kill those inside the automobile.
According to the American investigation, the car was travelling at high speed, about 80kmh, and the driver panicked.
The US military claimed the driver failed to stop or slow down when soldiers flashed a spotlight, shone a green laser onto the car's windscreen and fired warning shots. The soldiers stuck to the rules of engagement for this sort of situation and therefore no action should be taken against them, the US said.
US military authorities also claimed they had not been informed of Calipari's mission and the soldiers knew nothing. Better coordination could have prevented the death, they said. In an Italian probe, the agent driving the car told Rome prosecutors that it was travelling at 70kmh when it hit a ditch and slowed down.
Both the agent driving and the released hostage told investigators that the spotlight came on and the shots started at the same time, without any warning. The two Italians involved in the joint enquiry rejected the claim that rules of engagement were respected, arguing that there were no set procedures for the mobile 'blocking point' which the soldiers had set up.
According to the Italians, the US soldiers were under stress and inexperienced. Italian General Mario Marioli said he informed the US's liaison officer in Iraq that the car was heading for Baghdad airport 20 minutes before it came under fire.
Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters on Monday that the number of lethal incidents at US roadblocks in Iraq is steadily falling thanks to better procedures put in place after Calipari's death.
