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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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July 5th, 2006 - Italians Seeking Arrest
of 3 CIA Agents News article by the Associated Press |
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Italians Seeking Arrest of 3
CIA Agents By Alessandra Rizzo The Associated Press Wed Jul 5, 2:56 PM ET Prosecutors said Wednesday
they had arrested two Italian intelligence officers and were seeking four
more Americans as part of an investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of
an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003. The arrest of the two SISMI
intelligence officials was the first official acknowledgment that Italian
agents were involved in a case that prosecutors have called a clear violation
of Italian sovereignty. In a statement released in
Milan, prosecutors said three Americans being sought were CIA agents, while
the fourth worked at the joint U.S.-Italian air base of Aviano, where the
Egyptian was allegedly taken after his abduction. The statement did not
provide names, but said the two Italians, at the time of the kidnapping, were
the director of SISMI's first division - dealing with international terrorism
- and the head of the agency's operations in northern Italy. Italian media reports
identified the two as Marco Mancini, currently the head of military
counterespionage, and Gustavo Pignero, and said they were charged with
kidnapping. Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr,
an Egyptian cleric and terrorist suspect also known as Abu Omar, was
allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors say the
operation represented a severe breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised
their anti-terrorism efforts, and have already incriminated 22 purported CIA
agents. Prosecutors say Nasr was
taken by the CIA to a joint U.S.-Italian air base, flown to Germany and then
to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. The operation was believed
part of a CIA program known as "extraordinary rendition" in which
terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries. Prosecutors and a lawyer for
Nasr say he is being held in a Cairo prison. Italian media reports in
recent months have said that Italian intelligence officers were also
involved. But former Premier Silvio
Berlusconi maintained his government and Italian secret services had not
taken part in the operation or been informed. In March, SISMI director Nicolo
Pollari told EU lawmakers that Italian agents had no knowledge of the
operation. Nasr is believed to have
fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia and was under surveillance on suspicion of
recruiting Islamic militants, according to Italian media reports. Both SISMI and Milan
prosecutor Armando Spataro, who has been leading the probe, declined comment. Spataro is seeking the extradition
of the 22 purported CIA agents accused in Nasr's abduction. The previous
government led by Berlusconi decided against forwarding Spataro's extradition
request to Washington, but Spataro has said he would ask the new center-left
government led by Romano Prodi to make the request. Also as part of the
investigation, the Milan offices of an Italian daily, Libero, were searched
Wednesday by about a dozen police, who seized the computer of the newspaper's
deputy editor, Renato Farina. Farina has covered the case,
and the newspaper said police were looking for information they thought had
been leaked by the SISMI to the journalist. In Italy and across Europe,
leftist politicians accused the Berlusconi government, a U.S. ally, of
complicity with the CIA, while conservatives defended the officials involved
and criticized prosecutors for hurting the fight against terrorism. European investigator Dick
Marty, a Swiss senator, reported to Europe's top human rights body last month
that 14 European countries, including Italy, had aided the movement of
detainees who said they were abducted by U.S. agents and secretly transferred
to prisons around the world. "Today's arrest leaves
this complicity beyond doubt," said a statement from Cem Ozdemir and
Raul Romeva, two Green members of the European Parliament. "This arrest
is only the tip of the iceberg." But Jas Gawronski, an
Italian member of the European Parliament on a committee investigating CIA
activities, condemned the move by prosecutors. "Osama bin Laden is
happy," said Gawronski, a former Berlusconi spokesman. "In my
country today, instead of arresting terrorists we're arresting those who are
hunting terrorists." Copyright © 2006 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved External link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060705/ap_on_re_eu/italy_cia_kidnapping Italy
Arrests 2 in Kidnapping of Imam in '03 By Stephen Grey and Elisabetta Povoledo New York Times July 5, 2006 Milan,
July 5 - Two officials with the Italian intelligence agency were arrested
Wednesday in the kidnapping of a radical Egyptian cleric here in 2003. It was
the first indication that Italian intelligence agents might have been
directly involved in what prosecutors say was an American-led operation to
detain and interrogate the imam. Prosecutors
also sought the arrest of three operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency
and an employee of the American military airbase at Aviano, Italy. Last year,
Italian prosecutors charged 22 other Americans, who were employed by or
linked to the C.I.A., with involvement in the abduction of the cleric, Hassan
Mustafa Osama Nasr. The
government said it would "collaborate fully" with the investigation
and expressed its "trust in the institutional loyalty" of the
secret services. In the past, the government has denied any knowledge of or
involvement in the kidnapping. Last
month Germany's federal intelligence service, the BND, said it knew about the
American seizure of a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, in December 2003 in
Macedonia and his detention in Afghanistan, where, he said, he was tortured.
Previously, the German government had said it did not learn about the
abduction until May 2004. The
practice of "extraordinary rendition," which involves seizing a
terrorism suspect and transferring him to another country for interrogation,
has caused a furor in Europe. This is part of a backlash against American
tactics in fighting terrorism, some of which have involved secret cooperation
by European governments or intelligence services. European
governments have been under intense pressure to disclose any knowledge of
these renditions, but the Milan case is the first where a foreign government
has filed criminal charges against Americans for a counterterrorism
operation. A
senior Italian law enforcement official in Milan said the Italians and
Americans charged on Wednesday were all accused of direct involvement in the
kidnapping. The
official said the Italian intelligence agents - Marco Mancini, the current
head of military counterespionage, and his predecessor at the time of the
abduction, Gustavo Pignero - helped plan and carry out the kidnapping. One
witness told prosecutors that "three or four people" at the scene
of the abduction, on Feb. 17, 2003, spoke fluent Italian. The
official refused to be identified because he did not have permission to speak
publicly. The
arrests will put pressure on the new government of Prime Minister Romano
Prodi to decide whether to back the efforts of the Milan prosecutor, which
the previous government of Silvio Berlusconi had opposed. Lawyers
who expect to be involved in defending those charged said they had not
received documents from the prosecutors and thus could not comment on the
allegations. A
C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined to comment. Several
former American intelligence officials have said that the C.I.A. operatives
who took part in the abduction of the Egyptian left Italy long ago and that
the agency's station chief in Rome at the time is now stationed elsewhere. These
officials have said that the operation was conducted with the full knowledge
of the Italian intelligence service and that the station chief briefed his
Italian counterpart about the plans during a meeting in 2003. They said the
Italian intelligence official gave his implicit approval. The
cleric, Mr. Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was picked up while walking on a
street near his home, taken to a northern Italian military air base, then
flown to Egypt. At one point he was released and in a call to relatives
complained that he had been tortured. He was quickly rearrested, and is
apparently still in Egypt. Silvio
Sircana, a spokesman for the Italian government, said several Italian
intelligence agents had been questioned Wednesday. "They guaranteed
their complete noninvolvement in the episode," he said. On
several occasions, Nicoḷ Pollari, the head of the intelligence agency, has
testified that his agency played no part in the abduction. Mr.
Berlusconi, who lost an election in April, repeatedly denied having any
knowledge of such an operation. His government also refused to approve
extradition requests by Milanese prosecutors last year against the 22
Americans suspected of involvement. The Americans had left Italy before they
were charged. Mr.
Prodi's new government is less supportive of the war in Iraq than was Mr.
Berlusconi's. But Massimo Brutti, who oversees judicial issues for the
largest party in the governing majority, the Democrats of the Left, said the
change in government had not affected the decision to issue the arrest
warrants. Mr.
Brutti, who was once a member of the parliamentary committee overseeing the
secret services, said in a telephone interview: "I categorically exclude
that. The judiciary is absolutely independent and the current initiative has
nothing to do with the government." According
to Italian judicial officials in Milan, the arrest of the Italians followed
the testimony earlier this year of a military police officer. He told
prosecutors in Milan that the C.I.A. had used him to perform a routine
document check of Abu Omar on the street, a ruse to distract him moments
before he was abducted. The
police in Milan learned the identity of the Americans charged by tracing
cellphones used during the kidnapping, and linked some phones to Aviano Air
Base. But there were other cellphones identified near the scene that the
police now say were used by Italian officers who accompanied Abu Omar to
Aviano. Stephen
Grey reported from Milan for this article, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome. Copyright
2006 The New York Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/06/world/europe/06italy.html |