Giuliana Sgrena
Correspondent, Il Manifesto, Rome

Giuliana Sgrena works for the Italian communist newspaper, Il Manifesto, and the German weekly, Die Zeit. At the start of the Iraq war in 2003, she went to Baghdad to cover the bombing of Baghdad, where was she was abducted by insurgents in February 2005. She was released one month later, when she and the two Italian military intelligence officers who had helped secure her release came under fire from U.S. forces. One Italian intelligence officer was killed in the incident, and Sgrena and the other officer were wounded. She later wrote a book on these events, “Friendly Fire” (Haymarket, 2006). For her work in Iraq, she was awarded the Italian order of merit, the “Cavaliere del Lavoro”. As a war correspondent since 1988, Ms- Sgrena has covered such conflicts as the Algerian civil war, and the Somalia and the Afghanistan conflicts. During her travels, she has reported extensively on topics from the Horn of Africa, the Maghreb and the Middle East.