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Italy Honors Intel Officer Killed in Iraq

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 March 2005, 03:00 CST

ROME - With bouquets and the echoing tune of a lone trumpet, Italy honored an intelligence officer who lost his life protecting a former Italian hostage when U.S. troops sprayed their car with gunfire at a Baghdad checkpoint.

The state funeral Monday for Nicola Calipari drew up to 20,000 mourners, with crowds lining the streets and clapping as a car bearing his casket approached the Rome basilica. An honor guard slowly carried the casket draped with the tricolor Italian flag into the church.

Adding to the pain of the nation was a feeling of frustration as details of the shooting remained sketchy. On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini was to address the Chamber of Deputies on the circumstances surrounding Calipari's death, which fueled anti-American sentiment in a country where many protested the war in Iraq.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a strong U.S. ally who sent 3,000 troops to secure postwar Iraq despite opposition at home, has demanded that Washington provide a full explanation.

Amid the unanswered questions and outrage, Italian officials at the funeral urged national unity in Calipari's memory.

"This is the moment to pay homage all together, without controversy, to the heroic gesture of Nicola Calipari," Berlusconi's right-hand man, Gianni Letta, told the crowd. "We are proud of you, we'll follow your example and your extraordinary lesson in life."

Calipari, 50, was a practiced hostage negotiator who had helped bring home several Italians kidnapped in Iraq. He was shot as he headed to Baghdad airport Friday after securing the release of Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist who had been held captive for a month after her Feb. 4 abduction in Baghdad.

Sgrena said Calipari died in her arms after trying to shield her with his body from the American fire.

"A grateful and admiring Italy bows to its hero, the victim of a war without a name," said the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, which opposed the Iraq war. "His gesture has moved the whole country."

The Santa Maria degli Angeli basilica - originally designed by Michelangelo on the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian - and the surrounding piazza were packed with mourners. Berlusconi and U.S. Ambassador Mel Sembler were among dignitaries at the service, where a choir and a lone trumpet paid homage with music.

In the front row, Calipari's relatives - his wife Rosa and his children Silvia, 19, and Filippo, 14 - gripped each other's hands and dabbed away tears. Several buried their faces in their hands.

Before the funeral, Calipari's body lay in state at Rome's Vittoriano monument, where police estimated 100,000 people streamed past his coffin. The body had been returned from Iraq on Saturday night.

Sgrena, who was recovering in a Rome hospital from a shrapnel wound in the shoulder, did not attend the funeral, but her brother, companion and many colleagues at her paper, the communist daily Il Manifesto, did.

Italian military officials said two other intelligence agents were wounded in the shooting; U.S. officials said it was only one. Sgrena rejected the U.S. military's account of the shooting, claiming that American soldiers gave no warning before they opened fire.

In remarks published this week, Sgrena also said that it was possible they were targeted deliberately because the United States opposes Italy's policy of negotiating with kidnappers. She did not offer evidence to sustain her statement, and Rome prosecutors Franco Ionta and Pietro Saviotti, who are investigating the killing, said that there's no evidence indicating the shooting was the result of an ambush, according to news reports.

The White House dismissed Sgrena's claim.

"It's absurd to make any such suggestion, that our men and women in uniform would target individual citizens," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. He noted that the car was traveling on one of the most dangerous roads in Iraq.

Washington has promised to shed light on the shooting, which White House counselor Dan Bartlett described in an interview with CNN as a "horrific accident." On Friday, President Bush called Berlusconi to offer his apology and pledge a full investigation.

The U.S. ambassador, who was summoned to the premier's office in the hours after Calipari's death, was back there again Monday evening for another meeting with Berlusconi, state TV reported.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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