MILAN, Italy - An Italian judge, Wednesday convicted 23 US and two Italian secret agents for the CIA's kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003.
Source: Middle East Online
- The CIA's Milan station chief at the time, Robert Lady, was sentenced to eight years in prison and the other Americans to five years, all in their absence.
- The two Italians were given three-year prison terms.
- The trial, which opened in June 2007, is the first involving the actual alleged "extraordinary rendition" of a terror suspect in a covert CIA programme in which scores of people are thought to have been transferred to countries known to practise torture.
- "For us this first case puts the war on terror on trial," said Joanne Mariner of the rights group Human Rights Watch after prosecutor Armando Spataro made an impassioned closing speech.
- Twenty-five CIA agents and a US air force colonel were tried in absentia in the case, which also involved seven Italian secret service officials including the former head of military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, who was forced to quit over the affair.
- Osama Mustafa Hassan, an imam better known as Abu Omar, was snatched from a Milan street on February 17, 2003, in an operation allegedly coordinated by the CIA and the military intelligence agency SISMI.
- Abu Omar, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy, was allegedly taken to the US air force base in Aviano, northeastern Italy, then flown to the US base in Ramstein, Germany, and on to Cairo.
- The imam's suspected captors failed to take many standard precautions, notably speaking openly on cell phones, leaving investigators to suspect that the Americans had cleared their intentions with senior SISMI officials.
- Judge Oscar Magi hailed as "very important" the fact that the case ran through to a conclusion.
- The trial was delayed as successive Italian governments sought to have it thrown out as a threat to national security. Defendants argued that state secrecy rules prevented them from being able to prove their innocence.
- The issue went before Italy's Constitutional Court, which agreed that part of the investigation had violated state secrecy provisions but said the prosecution could use evidence obtained correctly.
- Spataro on Wednesday rejected the court ruling, saying: "There is no legal structure under which SISMI and the CIA could agree to carry out a kidnapping. It is absolutely against Italian law."
- "We certainly hope that these activities cannot be hidden because of state secrets," said Mariner, director of HRW's Terrorism and Anti-Terrorism Programme.
- Abu Omar's lawyer is demanding 10 million euros (14 million dollars) in damages for the kidnapping and transfer to a high-security prison outside Cairo where he says he was tortured.
- Spataro lamented what he called the "twisted logic" behind an operation that broke the law as well as sending a suspect to endure torture.
- "This only encourages the multiplication of terrorists," said Spataro, who became known for his work against the left-wing militant group the Red Brigades that was active in the 1970s.
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