Was abduction a hoax?

Suspicion continues to mount that Giuliana Sgrena, the journalist for the Italian Communist paper Il Manifesto, either faked her own abduction or became an accomplice after the fact with her jihadi captors. Yesterday Giuliana Sgrena told her version of the dramatic story contradicting US military claims that her car was fired upon when it failed to slow down at a Coalition checkpoint. Bloomberg: “It wasn’t a checkpoint, but a patrol that started shooting after pointing some lights in our direction,’’ the Ansa news agency cited Sgrena as telling the prosecutors. “We hadn’t previously encountered any checkpoint and we didn’t understand where the shots came from.’’

As if in cue, Sgrena then goes on to say what The Jawa Report had been predicting she would say: “I was never treated badly,’’ Sgrena told her colleagues at Manifesto upon her arrival in Rome, according to Ansa. The Italian left-wing, as predicted has seized upon Sgrena’s ordeal today. The headline at Sgrena’s own Communist paper shouts the headline that the Italian secret-service agent who had negotiated her release had been “Assassinated” by America. The Jawa Report has been predicting from day one that Sgrena would be released unharmed, and that on her release she would blame the US for her ordeal. The fact that her driver did not stop at a US checkpoint on a road scattered with checkpoints is more than a little odd—it is canny.

How does a driver in Iraq not know that the rules of engagement for Coalition forces are to fire upon any car which does not stop when ordered to? While the Italian people wish to know why the US fired upon Sgrena, people in the US want to know why it was Sgrena’s car did not stop when ordered to do so? “We thought the danger was over after my release to the Italians but all of a sudden there was this shoot-out, we were hit by a barrage of bullets,” she told RAI TV by telephone. Nicola Calipari, the senior secret service agent who had worked for her release, was telling her about what had been going on in Italy since her capture when the shooting started.

“He leaned over me, probably to protect me, and then he slumped down, and I saw he was dead,” said Sgrena. Sgena was kidnapped by her admitted friends in Iraq. She was kidnapped while on the phone with another journalist. A tape was released of her begging Italy to cave to the terrorists demands of pulling Italian troops out of Iraq the day before the Italian Senate was to vote on that very issue. The tape came exactly two-weeks after she was captured. One month to the day after her abduction she is released. On the day of her release her car speeds toward a US checkpoint, fails to stop when ordered, fails to heed warning shots, and the car is ultimately fired upon.

“I don’t believe a word of the American version,” said Oliviero Diliberto, head of the Italian Communist party, part of the main left-wing block led byformer premier Romano Prodi. “The Americans deliberately fired on Italians. This is huge. All of the center-left must vote in parliament for the withdrawal of our troops.” Today, Schiavulli received this mysterious phone call. Reuters: A friend of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped in Baghdad on Friday, received a call on Saturday from Sgrena’s telephone but it was unclear who was at the other end of the line. Barbara Schiavulli, a correspondent for Italian radio news agency GRT, saw Sgrena’s number appear on her telephone screen but when she answered she heard only Arab music and no one spoke, an editor at GRT in Rome said.

“The call lasted only a short moment and then the line was cut off. Barbara tried to call back but she couldn’t get through. It was impossible to know if the call was intentional or if it was an accident,” Simona D’Alessio told Reuters. Then there is this report that two Iraqis working with Ms. Sgrena are being held by the police. Iraqi police are holding two companions of kidnapped Sgrena for questioning about her abduction, officials said yesterday. Interior Ministry official Sabah Khazim said that the two were held for questioning “so that we can have a clear idea about the circumstances of the abduction of the Italian journalist and they will be released soon”. Colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman, another Interior Ministry official, said authorities wanted to gather as many details as possible from the two.

The officials would not identify the pair but sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they included her driver and interpreter. There is also the generic name of the terrorist group said to be holding Sgrena, The Islamic Jihad Organisation. More on Sgrena from the pro-terrorist al Jazeera:  Giuliana Sgrena, 56, a veteran Middle East correspondent for the leftist Il Manifesto daily. Within hours, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said talks had begun to try to secure her release, as the so-called Islamic Jihad Organisation handed him a chilling 72-hour deadline to pull his 3000 troops out of Iraq. “The negotiating machinery has been set in motion,” Berlusconi told a meeting of his ruling party, Forza Italia, hoping that it would be possible “to achieve a solution quickly”. ...

Sent to Baghdad to cover Sunday’s elections, Sgrena was described by colleagues as an Arabic-speaking feminist with a passionate interest in Islam... “Giuliana is petite, reserved and the complete opposite of what you’d image a war correspondent to be, but she fears nothing,” said her editor Loris Campetti. “She has very good contacts in Baghdad, including with the ulamas (Muslim clergy), and is against the war, in keeping with the Manifesto line. She was never embedded and wrote very personal and documented reports.”