Italy: Judge orders to arrest 13 CIA agents

Italian judge orders arrest of 13 CIA agents

By AIDAN LEWIS, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

ROME (AP) - An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents for allegedly helping deport an imam to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, an Italian official familiar with the investigation said Friday.
The agents are suspected in the seizure of an Egyptian-born imam identified as Abu Omar on the streets of Milan in February 2003, according to the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome declined to comment.

Prosecutors believe the agents seized Omar as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, according to reports Friday in newspapers Corriere della Sera and Il Giorno.

Investigators traced the agents through check-in details at Milan hotels and their use of Italian cell phones during the operation, the reports said. All the agents are American and include three women, Il Giorno said.

The reports said another six agents were being investigated for helping prepare the operation.

They said police also received an eyewitness account from an Egyptian woman who heard Omar calling for help and saw him being bundled into a white van as he walked from his house to a mosque.

The report said Omar was taken to Aviano, a joint U.S.-Italian base north of Venice, and was flown from there to another U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, before being taken in a second jet to Cairo.

A judge also has issued a separate arrest warrant for Omar, news agencies ANSA and Apcom said. In that warrant, Judge Guido Salvini claimed the seizure of Omar represented a violation of Italian sovereignty, Apcom reported.

Earlier this month, Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro told The Associated Press that the prosecution was treating the disappearance of Omar as an abduction.

Spataro declined to say who was suspected for the alleged abduction, but he said Omar's disappearance damaged an ongoing operation by Italian authorities. He said he visited the air base in February.

Omar was believed to have fought with jihadists in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and prosecutors were seeking evidence against him before his disappearance, according to a report last year in La Repubblica newspaper, which cited intelligence officials.

Italian papers have reported that Omar, 42, called his wife and friends in Milan after his release last year, recounting he had been seized by Italian and American agents and taken to a secret prison in Egypt, where he was tortured with electric shocks.

Italian officials believe he now is living in Egypt, although Italian newspaper accounts suggested he was returned to custody shortly after his release.

Politicians demand inquiry into CIA operations in Italy

By Peter Popham in Rome
27 June 2005


Senior politicians are calling for a full inquiry into the activities of United States intelligence operatives in Italy, after a Milan judge issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents. The agents allegedly abducted a suspected Islamic militant and took him to Egypt for interrogation.

Paolo Cento, a Green party MP who is vice-chairman of the Justice Committee of the lower house of parliament, has demanded an explanation of the episode from both the Italian interior and defence ministers.

"What has emerged from the investigations requires a political clarification," he said. "We want to know if US secret agents are free to operate in Italy, and if that is the case, we want to know how the government will ensure national sovereignty."

In issuing the warrants, Judge Chiara Nobili took an unprecedented stand against the US policy of "extraordinary rendition", popularly known as "outsourcing torture".

The 13, three of them women and one of them allegedly a former US consul in Milan, are said to have seized the Islamic suspected from a street in Milan and flown him to Egypt.

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, an Egyptian national, was the militant imam of a Milan mosque. He had been granted political asylum in Italy, but was being investigated by the Italian authorities for terrorist links. He was seized on 17 February 2003 while walking to his mosque, bundled into a van and driven away.

Mr Nasr was taken to the joint US-Italian air base at Aviano, north of Venice, and flown to Cairo via Germany. Last year he telephoned his wife and friends in Milan after being released and told them that he had been taken to a secret prison in Egypt and tortured with electric shocks.

For many Italians, the behaviour of the CIA agents betrays a contempt for territorial boundaries that leaves them near-speechless. The investigators were able to build up a detailed picture of the Americans' movements because they took no precautions, staying at Milan's most expensive hotels for weeks on end and using Italian cellphones and insecure hotel landlines for long conversations.

Italian investigators are also fuming at the casual way the Americans sabotaged their own investigations. "We supplied them with information about Abu Omar, then they used the information against us, undermining our entire operation against his terrorist network," a senior Italian investigator told The New York Times.

"The American system is of little use to us. We give them what we have, but we are given no useful information that can help us prosecute people."

Guido Salvini, the judge in charge of preliminary investigations in the case, said the abduction "was illegal because it violated Italian sovereignty, but it also had a negative impact on the overall war on terror".

If the CIA had not intervened, he went on, "Abu Omar might be standing trial in Italy now".

Extraordinary rendition, the American practice of exporting foreigners suspected of involvement in terrorism to countries where torture is routine, has been practised since the mid-1990s, but became frequent after the 11 September attacks. Egypt is the most common destination, but suspects have also been sent to Syria, Morocco and Jordan.

The indignation of the Italian authorities has been further fuelled by emerging evidence of an attempted cover-up of the abduction by the CIA, which in 2003 informed Italian anti-terrorism officers that the Milan imam had fled to Bosnia to evade police investigations.