Who is Giuliana Sgrena?

Following up on my postings (most recent) on the kidnapping of and subsequent U.S. military attack on the Italian reporter, Giuliana Sgrena, I've found this article from mid-February shortly after her kidnapping. Some excerpts, which add more weight to the idea that the attack was intentional:

February 12, 2005—On the front pages of major Iraqi papers across the land in recent days, one headline: "Free Her!"

The abduction Friday, 4 February, of the journalist from Il Manifesto, Giuliana Sgrena, has Iraqi civil society living in anguish about her fate [...]

[...]

Sheik Hussein al Zobey, Sunni coordinator of the refugee camps inside the University of Baghdad, uttered an impassioned appeal for the journalist's release: "In the name of truth, free her. I appeal in the name of those who come to help us. I ask the kidnappers to free Giuliana, who has promised to help us. She has laughed and played with our children—and has cried with us."

"Truly moving is the involvement of the Iraqi people in Giuliana Sgrena's ordeal," writes Il Manifesto's correspondent from Baghdad, Stefano Chiarini. "Suffering daily abuses and violence from occupation forces or their proxies, the Iraqis themselves are subjected to routine hostage-taking by the occupiers. [...] Under the pretext of looking for arms, American soldiers and their Iraqi trainees look for jewels and money . And, yet, the whole country has mobilised for the liberation of Giuliana."

[...]

Her 79-year-old father, pensioned railroad-worker Franco Sgrena, was an anti-fascist and partisan fighter in the Italian Resistance against Nazi-fascism in WW II and is still today a member and leader of the Communist Party.

[...]

All of Masera, learning of Giuliana's abduction, gathered around the family to console and to remember that Giuliana had continued their fight and had honored their past of resistance by opposing war, imperialism, aggression—above all by placing her profession at the service of the people.

[...]

She began early to be concerned about the world in the student movements of the sixties in Milan, which were the strongest in Italy. She faced police clubs at sit-down protests opposing the installation of Pershing and Cruise missiles in US military bases in Italy.

[...]

Simona Torretta and Simona Parri, the two humanitarian workers of "Un ponte per Baghdad" (A Bridge for Baghdad), abducted from their Baghdad office and freed on 28 September 2004, know Giuliana Sgrena well and have issued a statement on Il Manifesto after her abduction: "During the war, she showed the Iraq that no one saw—that of the civilians hit by the bombs. She was one of the first journalists to collect evidence of rape among women detainees at Abu Ghraib. Giuliana is much loved by Iraqis. They recognise her great humanity and her passion for truth."

[...]

"Giuliana was the first journalist in Italy to speak of the Iraqi resistance but never through the spokespersons of organized groups; always through the voices of the people, among which, prominent, were women's voices."

[...]

Sheik al Qubaisi [of the Association of Islamic Scholars (Sunni)] remains skeptical about the groups claiming responsibility for the abduction (another group, the Brigades of the Mujaheddin in Iraq, claimed that Sgrena had been killed, but evidence to the contrary has been subsequently confirmed). "We still have our doubts. We don't know if what they say is true. We believe that no Iraqi organization would organize a kidnapping of this kind, especially not of a journalist who intended to interview the refugees of Fallujah, victims of the American occupation."

[...]

On 10 February, Il Manifesto reported that a member of the Association of Islamic Scholars had been arrested by Allawi's authorities just hours before his expected appeal on behalf of the release of Giuliana Sgrena. Sheik Ali al Jabouri was arrested without any explanation for such a grave decision taken in this initial stage of negotiations for Sgrena's release, when the Sunni religious intervention could be crucial.

[...]

Indeed, according to Il Manifesto, the kidnapping of Giuliana Sgrena could not have come at a worse time for the Sunnis, as its representatives prepare to engage in denouncing the fraud of the elections. Rumors that only 45 percent of those Iraqis who registered to vote actually voted (which would lower significantly the percentage of total eligible voters not participating in the election) are strengthened by the reluctance of the authorities to come up with percentages. The spokesman for the electoral commission, Faryd Ayar, told the press as recently as shortly before 10 February that he could not produce data on the percentages of the vote.

What is evident to the Sunnis and to the Shia who oppose the occupation is that the next Iraqi government has been handed over to pro-American and pro-Iranian factions while Arab nationalists, Shia and Sunni, have been excluded. The establishment of a National Assembly peppered with representatives of pro-Iranian and pro-US factions will do nothing but engorge the belly of the resistance.

Giuliana Sgrena had predicted it. To her colleagues at Il Manifesto she had said before leaving for Baghdad: "The Americans will hand over Iraq to the Iranian SCIRI faction. But was it worth it to turn Iraq upside down just to place another Iran in the area?"

[...]

Who snatched Giuliana Sgrena and why?

The dominant theories among Italians are: 1) a random criminal abduction for money; 2) a planned action by resistance forces; 3) connivance and collusion of international security forces fronted by murky and dubious jihadists.

[...]

Well might we reflect on Sgrena's prophecy at the beginning of the war: "This is the most absurd of wars and it will be a bloodbath." If only she hadn't been so damned right!
  Online Journal article

Giuliana's March 7, 2005, article in Il Manifesto. Excerpt:

I had just started mentally counting when a friendly voice came to my ears "Giuliana, Giuliana. I am Nicola, don't worry I spoke to Gabriele Polo (editor in chief of Il Manifesto). Stay calm. You are free." They made me take my cotton bandage off, and the dark glasses. I felt relieved, not for what was happening and I couldn't understand but for the words of this "Nicola." He kept on talking and talking, you couldn't contain him, an avalanche of friendly phrases and jokes. I finally felt an almost physical consolation, warmth that I had forgotten for some time.

[...]

I only remember fire. At that point, a rain of fire and bullets hit us, shutting up forever the cheerful voices of a few minutes earlier.

The driver started yelling that we were Italians. "We are Italians, we are Italians." Nicola Calipari threw himself on me to protect me and immediately, I repeat, immediately I heard his last breath as he was dying on me. I must have felt physical pain. I didn't know why. But then I realized my mind went immediately to the things the captors had told me. They declared that they were committed to the fullest to freeing me but I had to be careful, "the Americans don't want you to go back." Then when they had told me I considered those words superfluous and ideological. At that moment they risked acquiring the flavor of the bitterest of truths, at this time I cannot tell you the rest.