Italy indicts dozens in CIA in abduction
ROME – The first criminal trial involving one of the Bush administration’s most controversial tactics in fighting terrorism is set to begin June 8 after an Italian judge on Friday indicted 33 people, including two dozen CIA operatives and the man who was Italy’s top spy.
Judge Caterina Interlandi ordered the 26 Americans and seven Italians to stand trial in connection with the February 2003 abduction of a radical Egyptian cleric who was snatched in broad daylight on a Milan street and whisked to an Egyptian jail, where he has said he was tortured.
“This is an important moment,” lead prosecutor Armando Spataro said in welcoming the indictments. He urged the Italian government to press ahead with petitions to extradite the defendants.
It is not clear that Italy will seek extradition of the Americans, and more than unlikely that the U.S. government would comply. In fact, it is all but guaranteed that none of the Americans will ever appear in court.
Still, the trial could go ahead because Italian law allows for the prosecution of defendants in absentia. Arrest warrants for all 26 men and women – 25 suspected CIA operatives, including two station chiefs and a U.S. Air Force colonel – have been issued and apply throughout the European Union.
The case has proved embarrassing to Washington for having exposed the highly secretive and extrajudicial practice known as “extraordinary rendition.” After years of denial, the Bush administration now acknowledges the tactic of capturing suspects and transporting them to third countries for interrogation but denies the sanctioning of torture.
The complicity of several European governments has also been exposed as prosecutors and investigators in Italy, Germany and elsewhere have attempted to build cases against American and European intelligence agents who are believed to have detained hundreds of suspects in extraordinary renditions.
The first trial promises to reveal more details about the covert operations, turning a fresh public spotlight on the Bush administration and its most loyal allies, such as the government of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The cleric at the center of the case, Hassan Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was released without charge from an Egyptian prison in February. Through an attorney, he said he was prepared to return to Italy and wanted to sue Berlusconi and the CIA, following what he described as confinement in a rat-infested cell where guards repeatedly beat him, applied electrical shocks to his body and abused his genitals.
“I have been reduced to a wreck of a human being,” Abu Omar said.
An Italian judicial source said he believed one of the CIA officers might have been present at some of the early interrogations.
Abu Omar entered Italy illegally in 1997 and was eventually granted political asylum. Though never charged with a crime, he was under investigation in Italy for allegedly organizing networks that recruited fighters for Iraq. Italian law-enforcement officials said they were about to arrest him when the CIA intervened.
For evidence, Italian prosecutors relied heavily on an extensive paper trail left by the CIA operatives as they plotted and seized Abu Omar. The agents ran up bills totaling tens of thousands of dollars at Milan’s finest hotels and restaurants and chatted openly on traceable cellular telephones. They left behind photocopies of their passports and frequent-flier cards.
Although many of the Americans were using aliases, Italian investigators were able to track phone calls and other contacts to Robert Lady, the now-retired CIA station chief in Milan, and former Rome station chief Jeff Castelli, the CIA’s top man in Italy.
After Abu Omar was detained, his captors bundled him into a van and rushed him to U.S.-run Aviano air base in northern Italy. A privately contracted jet flew him to Egypt, with a stopover in the U.S. base at Ramstein, Germany.
The only non-CIA American named in the indictment is Lt. Col. Joseph Romano, from the Aviano base.