What Happened to Giuliana Sgrena?

Freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena -- the Italian woman who just escaped death at the hands of American soldiers -- has been relating an account of the shooting that flatly contradicts the Pentagon's story. Doug Ireland summarizes:

[T]he Nouvel Observateur's daily news bulletin reports in a Saturday afternoon posting that Sgrena says the conduct of the car in which she was being transported to liberty couldn't possibly justify the fusillade that riddled it and its occupants with bullets. "Our car was rolling along at normal speed, so it was impossible for there to have been a misunderstanding," Sgrena told the Italian magistrates who've been charged with investigating the murderous incident, according to the Italian wire service Ansa--which also says her account has been confirmed by one of the Italian secret service agents in the car with her, who was likewise wounded. These two testimonies from the victims of the shooting completely contradict the Pentagon's account that Sgrena was in a speeding car that was heading straight for a checkpoint and was shot at to stop it. In fact, says Sgrena, there was no checkpoint--"just a patrol that started shooting at us as soon as they bracketed their headlights on us."

Sgrena's boyfriend is taking the accusations further, calling the shooting a deliberate ambush aimed at suppressing unspecified information the reporter had acquired. Eason Jordan, call your office…