Technically, it's still fratricide, or "friendly fire". No fault of the checkpoint, but still fratricide. It would seem that the most basic Intel 101 lessons on egress were ignored. The Italian agent should have coordinated with the American intelligence to arange a time/place for the egress. Same process as if a recon patrol is entering friendly lines, or flying back from enemy territory. You coordinate it before you just walk up to the checkpoint and beg to get shot.
The Italians might not have made prior coordination, or her release might have been a suprise. They might have thought they weren't so close to getting her back, so they didn't figure on needing to get out in a hurry. Still, the agent had to have figured on getting back to his own area, and should just follow what he already had in place for himself.
The Italians may have made prior coordination, and someone in the American food chain of intel dropped the ball. It's happended before, where Iraqi Nationals working with SF have been shot up at checkpoints because someone didn't get the word to Joe Snuffy that friendlies were coming.
The checkpoint folks are at no way at fault here, but someone is. Yeah, it's a dumass move to haul-ass towards an American checkpoint, but they were probably interested in getting the hell out of there, and the Iraqi driver probably more so. If they thought there was an American Intel officer whom they had already coordinated with there waiting on them, then they might not have been too concerned with their speed. They might not have know that the ball had been dropped until the shots started coming. They might have made no coordination and were just looking for the nearest friendly forces.
Anyway you cut it though, baisc coordination wasn't followed through with and it resulted in casulties of friendly forces. We'll never find out the truth of why.
Ross