Rescue of Giuliana Sgrena: Encyclopedia II - Rescue of Giuliana Sgrena - Military reports

Rescue of Giuliana Sgrena - Military reports

Two military reports were produced, one by the US Army and one by the Italian government.

Rescue of Giuliana Sgrena - Release of Classified information in US Report

The Multinational force in Iraq released an official report, that was posted on the coalition's a Web site, http://www.mnf-iraq.com. In a gross blunder, the report, that was supposed to contain classified information (such as the name of the other Sismi agent, the names of the soldiers involved, coalition troop movements etc.), was published in a form that allowed the censored information to be easily retrieved.

The report was published in the PDF file format, and the classified sentences were covered by a black bar. However, the text below it had not been erased, and was present in the file. A cut-and-paste between Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Word was sufficient to make the lines reappear, but even simpler command-line tools such as pdftotext could quickly extract the classified information.

The possibility of reading the complete report was quickly discovered by a Greek exchange student in Bologna, who preferred to maintain anonymity, and by Gianluca Neri, who posted the versions on his blog, Macchianera. There has been some argument about who was first out, but as Neri himself wrote, it was such a simple task that more people could well have noticed in a short time independently of each other.

Rescue of Giuliana Sgrena - Content of the US Report

The US report cleared the soldiers of the 69^th Infantry of any wrongdoing, claiming the unit followed proper procedures and defending the decision by one soldier, Spc. Mario Lozano, to open fire after flashing a light and firing warning shots.[2]

The report indicated that the soldiers had already turned away about 15–30 cars before the incident, and were alert because of two warnings (BOLOs, Be On LookOut) about two possible VBIEDs (Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device), a black and a white car. The blocking position had been maintained for longer time than planned due to faulty communications procedure, which was caused by a failure of the VOIP system used by US Army; whereas FM was available, it was not used [3].

The spotlight and the green laser used by the US soldiers had proven effective at halting and making the previous cars turn around. Specialist Mario Lozano had first maneuvered the spotlight, and then switched to the machine gun to shoot the Italian's vehicle.

The car was estimated to travel at 50 mph, or 80 km/h, and it did not brake until fired upon. Eleven rounds were shot on the car, of which five hit the front.

A series of unrelated events were registered as contributing to the tragedy:

• The travel of ambassador Negroponte by car instead of by helicopter, because of bad weather;
• Communications failure between the blocking point and their headquarters;
• The daily delay of Ms Sgrena's rescue for several days;
• The Italians were not aware of the roadblock;
• The soldiers were not aware of the arrival of the Italians.

The US report did note that the unit involved in the incident had received inadequate training on how to deploy armored vehicles in blocking position before a roadblock before leaving for Iraq, and for only 10 days with another unit once it arrived.[4]

Only one US officer, Captain Green, knew of the fact that Ms. Sgrena was being rescued, after Italian General Mario Marioli mentioned it to him. However, Since Marioli added "it is best if no one knows," Green took it as an order not to pass the information on to others.

Rescue of Giuliana Sgrena - Italian Report

A report by the Italian government was published by May 2. The Italian investigators disagreed on the subjects of the speed of the car, the signaling (or lack of it) before the Americans opened fire, and the question of whether the Americans were aware of Calipari's presence and activities in Baghdad. The Italian report also noted that the Italian investigators claim that "senior US officers who arrived on the scene of the shooting had criticized the checkpoint for being poorly illuminated, inadequately signaled and badly positioned."[5]

The Italians point that, whereas the US forces were unaware of Calipari's objectives, they were surely aware of his presence, as Calipari and his colleague were given ID badges and obtained sleeping quarters at Camp Victory. Furthermore, they claimed that the knowledge of the operation could in no way have avoided the incident, since there was no predetermined itinerary, due to the mission's nature.

It was pointed out that the officer responsible for the blocking point had not properly laid out signs and obstacles, even if the blocking point duty, after a while, clearly would not have been a short one. This left the proper functioning of the blocking point entirely on the shoulders of the two gunners, who already had with other duties, as operating the spotlight. The Americans had claimed that, since such signs are usually in Arabic and English, they would have been useless to the Italians because they would not have understood them; the Italian report considers these allegations "mildly put absurd," because words like "STOP" and "DANGER" are internationally recognized. In fact, stop signs on Italian roads have "STOP", as in English, written on them, and are identical to those used in the United States.

The "alert line" and the "warning line" were all at smaller distances that prescribed practice; the "stop line" was absent altogether. All these were approximately known to the soldiers, but there was no sign for incoming vehicles. In particular, the Alert line was just 120 m from the first military vehicle, instead of the prescribed 200–400 m. This, combined with the lack of signalling, would have forced the gunners to be alert and not get distracted for a single second throughout the 80-minute long mission.

The only signals used were the spotlight and the green laser. The Italian report indicates that they both rely on the quick reactions of the crew operating them, and the laser is especially difficult to point on a moving target in a short time. A distraction on the gunner's side would easily transform a vehicle in a threat to be stopped by force.

The Italian report also noted the fact that the soldiers who manned the checkpoint had placed no signs or traffic cones on the roadway indicating the presence of a checkpoint ahead, despite the fact that they were positioned around a nearly 90 degree bend in the road, which obscured the checkpoint from approaching cars: "No signs warning traffic of the presence of a US roadblock—one of the most basic precautionary measures. One of the most important rules was not respected by the soldiers manning the checkpoint."[6]

The report also indicated that the idea behind the blocking point was inherently dangerous, as approaching vehicles were forced to turn around on a one-way highway.

The Italian investigators also faulted the US soldiers for not stringing a concertina wire barrier which could have stopped the car before reaching the roadblock, but the soldiers "didn't like to use concertina wire at night because of the danger posed by cars getting tangled up in it and requiring assistance."[7]

Conversely, the US Army's report downplayed the absence of signs or other indicators of the roadblock's presence, arguing that they were not effective at night.[8] However, the US Army report indicated that the roadblock unit reportedly had no signs to deploy, since at the time of "the 69th's signs—reading—'Stop or you will be shot!' were still in the shop, awaiting a technician to cover up the 'or you will be shot' phrase, deemed offensive, with tape." It is unclear whether these signs would have been used had they been available.[9]

The Italian report specifically accuses the US forces of tampering with the crime scene, in an attempt to make a proper investigation impossible. Also, it pointed that estimates of the speed of Sgrena's car varied from 50 to 80 mph, a strangely spread measurement considering that two soldiers were experienced policemen.

The Italian report also claimed that only three seconds elapsed between the warning signals from the mobile checkpoint and the time when the soldiers opened fire. They add that, despite the fact that the car was only travelling at 40 to 50 km/h, this three-second interval did not give the driver enough time to stop the car.[10]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Military reports", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki