Italy to charge U.S. soldier with murder of Nicola Calipari

January 18, 2006 -- As WMR reported last year, the number two man in charge of Italian military intelligence, Nicola Calipari, and Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, were targeted by the U.S. military in a purposeful assassination last year while they were enroute to Baghdad International Airport after Sgrena was freed by her Iraqi insurgent captors. Calipari was killed and Sgrena was severely wounded in the U.S. attack. Both had reportedly been given information by the insurgents about U.S. war atrocities committed in Iraq and other sensitive information that was embarrassing to the Bush administration.

Italy to charge U.S. soldier with murder of Nicola Calipari, the deputy chief of Italian military intelligence

Yesterday, prosecutor Franco Ionta announced in Rome that a U.S. soldier would be charged with one count of murder in the shooting death of Calipari and one count of attempted murder in the shooting of Sgrena. The Pentagon claims the shootings were an "accident."

Prosecutors have already issued arrest warrants for a number of U.S. intelligence agents in the illegal kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in February 2003.