The deadly shooting of an Italian intelligence officer by U.S. troops at a checkpoint near Baghdad on Friday was one of many incidents in which civilians have been killed by mistake at checkpoints in Iraq, including local police officers, women and children, according to military records, U.S. officials and human rights groups.
U.S. soldiers have fired on the occupants of many cars approaching their positions over the past year and a half, only to discover that the people they killed were not suicide bombers or attackers but Iraqi civilians. They did so while operating under rules of engagement that the military has classified and under a legal doctrine that grants U.S. troops immunity from civil liability for misjudgment.
Human rights groups have complained that the military's rules of engagement for handling local citizens at checkpoints are too permissive. The groups have accused U.S. forces of making inadequate efforts to safeguard civilians and to comply with laws of war that prohibit the use of excessive or indiscriminate force and permit deadly action only when soldiers' lives are clearly threatened.
The military has responded that in a time of widespread suicide bombings, precautions that troops take to protect themselves are fully justified.
But the circumstances of Friday's shooting of Italian military intelligence officer Nicola Calipari made it particularly vulnerable to calamity, a military source said as he divulged new details of how the car in which Calipari and a newly freed hostage, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, came to be attacked.
The automobile was traversing onto a route -- the road to the airport -- where soldiers have been killed in shootings and by roadside bombs. U.S. soldiers had established an impromptu evening checkpoint at the entrance to the road about 90 minutes earlier and had stopped other vehicles. They knew a high-level embassy official would be moving to the airport on that road, and their aim was to support this movement.
But no specific coordination occurred between those involved in Sgrena's rescue and the military unit responsible for the checkpoint, according to the source, who said he cannot be named because the military's investigation into the incident is continuing.
Soldiers at the checkpoint have told U.S. military officers that they flashed lights, used hand signals and fired warning shots in an effort to stop the car, which they believed was traveling at more than 50 mph, a typical speed for that road. But Sgrena, who had just been released by Iraqi captors, recalled later that the car was not traveling very fast and that soldiers started firing "right after lighting" a spotlight -- a decision she said was not justified. Sgrena was wounded by shrapnel in the U.S. barrage.
‘Lack of prior coordination’
The absence of advance communication between the Italians and the U.S. soldiers at the checkpoint appears to have put the occupants of the car in grave jeopardy, given what many U.S. officials describe as the military's standard practice of firing at onrushing cars from their checkpoints in Iraq.
"In my view, the main contributing factor was a lack of prior coordination with the ground unit," the source said. "If requested, we would have resourced and supported this mission very differently."
Military officials in Iraq have said for two days that they cannot answer questions about U.S. rules of engagement because of a need to keep insurgents off guard. Officials have not said whether these rules have changed since the insurgency in Iraq worsened in late 2003. They also have declined to estimate how many civilians such as Calipari have been killed accidentally by U.S. forces -- at checkpoints or elsewhere in Iraq.
But Army documents indicate that the 3rd Infantry Division -- the military unit that includes the troops responsible for shooting Calipari -- was involved in other shootings of civilians at checkpoints. In April 2004, Army criminal investigators asked a sergeant serving in the division if he and his fellow soldiers had shot at women and children in cars, and the soldier answered, "Yes." Asked why, he replied, "They didn't respond to the signs [we gave], the presence of troops or warning shots."
The soldier, whose name was redacted in documents released by the Army on Friday in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, went on to say: "We fired warning shots at everyone, they would speed up to come at us, and we would shoot them. You couldn't tell who was in the car from where we were, we found that out later. . . . We didn't go through the cars digging around for stuff, we would just look in and see they were dead and could see there were women inside."
Another member of the division told investigators that he also saw women and children shot while approaching checkpoints.
‘The right thing’
"Basically, we were at a checkpoint, we had two Arabic signs that said to turn around or be shot. Once [they passed] . . . the first sign, they fired a warning shot. If they passed the second sign, they shot the vehicle. Sometimes there would be women and children in the car, but usually it was soldiers."
"Sometimes it bothers me," the man said. "What if they couldn't read the signs? But then what if they had a bomb in the car? We fired warning shots and they kept coming, so I think we did the right thing."
A third man in the unit separately told investigators that a colleague shot his weapon at "a hostile vehicle and it missed and hit a truck behind it, which housed a group of people."
The Army's investigation was begun after assertions that the unit had committed multiple war crimes and fired indiscriminately at civilians in 2003, but investigators concluded last July that there "was insufficient evidence to prove or disprove" allegations of wrongdoing. They said women and children had indeed been shot near checkpoints, but on a presumption -- which turned out to be wrong -- that they were combatants. The Army decided the soldiers who fired would be held blameless.
A senior official of the U.S.-led military task force in Iraq, briefing reporters in August on the issue of compensation for damages to Iraqis and wrongful killings, spelled out the legal basis for this position. He said that "when an individual approaches a checkpoint" and is fired upon, "that is a combat activity of United States forces" and thus is excluded from civil liability or compensation under U.S. law that grants up to $15,000 per incident.
U.S. officials say that in those cases in which some U.S. payment has been made, it comes from money allocated to field commanders for "sympathy payments" of as much as $2,500 per incident or killed victim. The family of the Italian officer killed Friday has no standing to seek legal redress.
Human Rights Watch published a lengthy report on civilian casualties in Iraq in October 2003, which detailed incidents in which 11 Iraqis died at checkpoints manned by other U.S. units -- including two policemen in an unmarked car in hot pursuit of suspected terrorists. The group called for more efforts to warn of checkpoint dangers, including the use of better signs and lights, more interpreters, and a public education campaign. News accounts have detailed at least 14 other deaths of civilians at checkpoints.
The group also reprinted excerpts from an Army task force's internal study that described its soldiers as untrained and unprepared to conduct checkpoint operations. The study asked: "How does the soldier know exactly what the rule of engagement is" when shifting from combat to policing? "Soldiers who have just conducted combat against dark-skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes have difficulty trusting dark-skinned personnel wearing civilian clothes."
‘Rules of law’
Nicole Choueiry, spokeswoman on the Middle East region at Amnesty International in London, said the shooting of Calipari "is not the first incident. It came to light because she [Sgrena] is a journalist. We have heard of many incidents involving the deaths of civilians in unclear situations."
She said that although "U.S. troops have a duty to protect themselves, this must not be done at the expense of civilians and it should be done within the rules of law."
She said that the main purpose of the occupation is to protect civilians, not place them in jeopardy, and that her group "calls again on the U.S. and multinational troops in Iraq to clarify their rules of engagement and to give assurances that the international law which governs armed conflict situations is not broken."
Staff Sgt. Nick Minecci, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, responded that checkpoints are extremely dangerous and that because of the threat of bombs, "plus insurgents driving by and shooting, the troops have to maintain a constant level of awareness. It's a pretty scary situation to have a vehicle bearing down on you." He said that military convoys must have prior military clearance but that he was not sure about diplomatic convoys.
Researcher Karl Evanzz contributed to this report.