(ANSA) – ROME, MAR 4 – Italian President Sergio Mattarella paid homage to late intelligence officer Nicola Calipari Tuesday on the 20th anniversary of his death in Iraq.
Calipari was killed on March 4, 2005, when US troops manning a temporary roadblock opened fire on a car carrying him, another agent and released hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport.
The intelligence officer shielded with his body Sgrena, a journalist for il Manifesto who had been kidnapped by insurgents a month prior. Mattarella hailed Calipari’s “sacrifice” saying his difficult mission to Baghdad had led to the successful rescue of the abducted Italian.
“If the circumstances that caused his death are still not clear, instead Calipari’s extreme generosity stands out as he responded to the shootout by shielding with his body the person he had successfully freed”, he noted in a “gesture of heroism written in the Republic’s history”.
Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani also remembered Calipari with a post on X Tuesday, describing him as an “Italian hero”.
Calipari was a veteran secret service agent and experienced negotiator who had helped return other hostages kidnapped in Iraq home to Italy.
The US soldier who shot at the Toyota that was carrying Sgrena and Calipari to the airport, Mario Lonzano, was acquitted by an Italian Court of Assizes after it ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the case because multinational forces in Iraq are under the exclusive criminal jurisdiction of their respective countries of origin. (ANSA).
Read article…
Calipari was killed on March 4, 2005, when US troops manning a temporary roadblock opened fire on a car carrying him, another agent and released hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport.
The intelligence officer shielded with his body Sgrena, a journalist for il Manifesto who had been kidnapped by insurgents a month prior. Mattarella hailed Calipari’s “sacrifice” saying his difficult mission to Baghdad had led to the successful rescue of the abducted Italian.
“If the circumstances that caused his death are still not clear, instead Calipari’s extreme generosity stands out as he responded to the shootout by shielding with his body the person he had successfully freed”, he noted in a “gesture of heroism written in the Republic’s history”.
Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani also remembered Calipari with a post on X Tuesday, describing him as an “Italian hero”.
Calipari was a veteran secret service agent and experienced negotiator who had helped return other hostages kidnapped in Iraq home to Italy.
The US soldier who shot at the Toyota that was carrying Sgrena and Calipari to the airport, Mario Lonzano, was acquitted by an Italian Court of Assizes after it ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the case because multinational forces in Iraq are under the exclusive criminal jurisdiction of their respective countries of origin. (ANSA).
Read article…
