Sgrena claims kidnappers warned her of US attack

DeutscheWelle: The Italian journalist wounded by US troops shortly after the end of her month-long kidnap ordeal fanned a growing diplomatic rift between Rome and Washington by suggesting US soldiers deliberately tried to kill her.

Giuliana Sgrena, wounded when the convoy taking her to safety was riddled with bullets by a US patrol near Baghdad airport on Friday, said on Sunday she may have been a target because the US opposed negotiations with her kidnappers.

In an account for her newspaper, Sgrena paid tribute to Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence officer who was killed when a US patrol opened fire on the convoy taking her to Baghdad airport. During the burst of gunfire that killed him and left her with wounds to a lung, Sgrena said a warning from her kidnappers that the Americans would try to kill her came back to haunt her.

"I immediately thought of what my kidnappers had told me. They said they were committed to releasing me, but that I had to be careful 'because there are Americans who don't want you to go back'. When they told me, I though it superfluous and ideological. In that moment, for me, it almost became the bitterest truth," wrote Sgrena.

With most attention focused on the dramatic aftermath, little has been said about the circumstances of her actual release. Link