Italy seeks arrests in abduction

ROME – Italian authorities ordered the arrests of a former CIA station chief, an Air Force commander and two other Americans, and took a top Italian spymaster into custody Wednesday as they broadened their investigation into the CIA’s alleged abduction of a radical Muslim imam.

The new warrants issued by prosecutors in Milan bring to 26 the number of Americans, most of them alleged CIA operatives, being sought in connection with the February 2003 abduction of Hassan Osama Nasr. None of the Americans named in the warrants is still in Italy, nor has any been arrested.

The cleric, known as Abu Omar, was seized off a Milan street and taken to a prison in his native Egypt, where he has claimed he was tortured.

U.S. and Italian authorities believe Abu Omar was involved in recruiting terrorists, and Italian police have said they were planning to arrest him when the CIA intervened.

Two Italian intelligence agents also have been added to the indictment – the first official acknowledgment of Italian involvement in the best-documented apparent case of the secret, controversial CIA practice known as extraordinary rendition. This could have broad implications for hotly disputed European collusion in CIA anti-terrorism operations, in an episode seen by many here as a violation of national sovereignty.

Marco Mancini, the No. 2 official in Italy’s military intelligence agency, SISMI, was arrested on suspicion of collaborating in the alleged CIA-run abduction, Italian authorities said. A second SISMI official, Gen. Gustavo Pignero, who is in poor health, was placed under house arrest.

Before the arrest of the two Italians, official had denied knowledge of the case. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi repeatedly said he was unaware of the abduction, and his government blocked efforts by the Milan prosecutors to pursue the case. When lead Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro sought the extradition of several of the American suspects early this year, Berlusconi’s justice minister refused to cooperate.

A center-left coalition replaced Berlusconi’s government in May, and it may be giving a better hearing to the Milan prosecutors. In marked contrast to the previous administration, Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s government Wednesday night pledged “maximum cooperation” with the judiciary, and expressed faith in the “institutional loyalty” of the state security services.

A statement Wednesday from the Milan prosecutors’ office said warrants had been issued for three CIA officers who participated in the abduction. Sources said one was the former station chief at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, whose indictment raises the level of the rendition operation. An account in today’s La Stampa newspaper said the station chief was in contact with SISMI’s Pignero during the planning stages of the Abu Omar operation.

Sources said the fourth warrant was for Lt. Col. Joseph Romano, a commander at the Aviano air base in northern Italy run jointly by U.S. and Italian forces. The Los Angeles Times has previously reported that Italian investigators believe Romano received periodic reports from Abu Omar’s abductors as they drove to the base, then aided them as they bundled him into a jet that transported him to Egypt, with a stopover in the U.S. airbase at Ramstein, Germany.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Rome declined to comment Wednesday.

Italian judicial sources have said for months they believed that SISMI agents participated in the operation. Yet SISMI director Nicolo Pollari testified earlier this year that his staff played no part in the abduction.

Abu Omar has remained in an Egyptian prison, off and on, since he was delivered there by his American captors. He told relatives he was tortured repeatedly and is in poor condition. His attorney recently told La Stampa that he wished to return to Italy – where he had refugee status – to sue the former Berlusconi government.