“IF YOU hesitate, you come home in a box and I didn’t want to come home in a box,” said Mario Lozano, the American soldier being tried for murder after fatally shooting an Italian military intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Baghdad in 2005.

A US soldier went on trial in absentia today in the shooting death of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Iraq two years ago, a case that strained relations between Rome and Washington.

An Italian judge today ordered a US soldier to stand trial for the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Baghdad, the prosecutor said.