A US soldier who goes on trial in absentia next week in Rome for murder caused a furore in Italy today for defending his fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq.
Mario Lozano of the US Army's 69th Infantry Regiment, is charged in Italy with voluntary homicide for killing Nicola Calipari as the agent was escorting a newly freed hostage, reporter Giuliana Sgrena, to Baghdad airport in 2005.
Lozano broke his two-year silence by telling a US newspaper in an interview published this week that he had no choice but to fire and "take them out".
Lozano said Calipari's vehicle had come too close to the military checkpoint.
"You have a warning line, you have a danger line, and you have a kill line," he was quoted as saying by the New York Post.
"Anyone inside 100 metres is already in the danger zone ... and you gotta take them out," he said.
"If you hesitate, you come home in a box - and I didn't want to come home in a box. I did what any soldier would do in my position."
His comments upset Sgrena and Calipari's widow and were widely reprinted in Italian newspapers. La Repubblicanewspaper noted his explanations were "striking for their total absence for any expression of remorse".
The agent's widow, Senator Rosa Calipari, criticised Lozano for talking to the press instead of Italian magistrates, who have been unable to speak to or even locate Lozano despite requests from Rome for judicial cooperation.
"There's a trial. He should come and make his statements at the trial," she said.
That is not likely to happen. Washington has cleared its forces of any wrongdoing despite complaints from the Italian government. It has also refused to hand over Lozano, who is living in New York, and said it considered the case closed.