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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 29th,
2008 - Italy Officer Tells of Spying on Spies in Cleric’s Kidnapping News article by the Los Angeles
Times |
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Italy Officer Tells of Spying
on Spies in Cleric’s Kidnapping Testifying in the trial of 26 Americans, the officer recalls how
police tracked cellphone traffic to piece together prosecution of the
disputed practice known as extraordinary rendition. By Tracy Wilkinson Los Angeles Times May 29, 2008 Milan, Italy - One of
Italy's top cops told a court Wednesday how, with meticulous detective work
and substantial luck, he blew the lid off one of the Bush administration's
most controversial counter-terrorism tactics. Testifying in the trial of
26 Americans, most of them CIA operatives, who are accused of abducting a
radical Egyptian cleric in Milan, the senior officer described tracking
massive amounts of cellular telephone traffic to piece together Europe's only
prosecution of the much-disputed practice known as extraordinary rendition. The officer, Bruno Megale,
recounted an astonishing tale of spies spying on spies. Police, armed with
judicial warrants, used cellphone logs, wiretaps and intercepted e-mails to
ensnare a CIA station chief, a U.S. Air Force colonel, five American
diplomats and officers from Italy's military intelligence service accused of
collaborating with the Americans. The Americans are being
tried in absentia; none are in Italy and none have acknowledged the
proceedings in Milan's main courthouse. For their 20-plus court-appointed
defense attorneys, one said, this is a trial of ghosts. Megale, head of the Italian
anti-terrorism police in Milan, said he and his agents first became aware of
the disappearance of the cleric, known as Abu Omar, when his wife and friends
reported him missing after he dropped out of sight Feb. 17, 2003. They
wondered, did Italian authorities have him? The Italians didn't. As is
now known, Abu Omar was nabbed by an alleged CIA squad that threw him in a
car, put him on a private jet at a U.S. military base in northern Italy and
whisked him off to Egypt, where he has said he was tortured. But Megale and the police
were unaware of the CIA operation. And so they began to try to find out who
had kidnapped Abu Omar. "The sensation was that
he had been kidnapped. ... We spoke of possibilities, of the Americans, the Egyptian
[security] service ...," Megale testified. "At first there were no
definitive clues." Megale and his agents
interviewed people in Milan's large Muslim community, including a couple of
people who saw Abu Omar being taken away. But there was no real progress
until 14 months later, when Abu Omar telephoned home from Egypt and told his
wife and friends what had happened. Before his disappearance,
Abu Omar, whose full name is Hassan Osama Nasr, was being investigated by
Megale's office for possible ties to radical groups sending Islamic militants
to Iraq. As part of that inquiry, police bugged the phones in Abu Omar's home
and mosque. When he called, the police listened, and jumped into action. Megale obtained records of
all cellphone traffic from the transmission tower nearest the spot where Abu
Omar was abducted, for a 2 1/2 -hour period around the time he disappeared.
There were 2,000 calls. Then, using a computer
program, Megale was able to narrow down the pool by tracing the phones that
had called each other, in other words, an indication of a group of people
working together. Seventeen phone numbers, which showed intensifying use
around the time of the abduction, were pinpointed. By following all other
calls made from those phones, the investigators ultimately identified 60
numbers, including that of a CIA officer working undercover at the U.S.
Embassy in Rome. In his testimony, Megale
revealed that one telephone number he recognized was that of Robert Seldon
Lady, then-CIA station chief in Milan. Lady and Megale had worked together in
counter-terrorism investigations. It was a number, Megale said somberly, that
he and his team knew. Megale and his agents then
set about establishing that all the names to which the phones were registered
were fictitious. Most of the phones were activated about four months before
the abduction and went out of service a few days after it. Ultimately, with layer upon
layer of cross-referencing, Megale identified 26 American suspects, although
many of the names in the indictment are thought to be aliases. Most of the
details of Megale's testimony have already been reported in The Times and
other newspapers. But the blow-by-blow account represents the meat of the
prosecution's case and was delivered by, arguably, its star witness, an
unlikely figure destined to take down a major CIA operation. In security circles, Megale
is widely known as a prominent expert on Islamic terrorism, a field he has
specialized in for a decade. Yet he shuns the spotlight, is rarely quoted in
news accounts and his public appearances are generally limited to courtrooms,
where, as a lead investigator on numerous terrorism cases, he is often called
to testify. "He knows all the
names, all the connections," senior prosecutor Armando Spataro said.
"Counter-terrorism officials all over the world want to know about
him." An owl-faced man with heavy
brows who comes from Italy's poor south, Megale is discreet and fiercely
serious. He rarely smiles, or shows much emotion of any kind. Senior Italian police
officials in Milan have expressed resentment that the CIA nabbed Abu Omar
without informing them and before their investigation of his activities had
been completed. If the prosecution's
allegations are true, it would appear the American operatives informed not
the police but the Italian military intelligence branch, a more politicized
agency close to the prime minister's office and whose former head is among
the Americans' codefendants in the trial. External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rendition29-2008may29,0,2445725.story Italian
Investigator Says U.S. Agents Left Obvious Clues in Abduction Case By Elisabetta Povoledo New York Times May 29, 2008 Milan - A top Italian
terrorism investigator on Wednesday described the government’s ease in
unraveling an alleged C.I.A. operation to kidnap a radical imam: all that was
necessary, the investigator said, was to trace the cellphones in use near the
spot in Milan where the imam disappeared while going to a mosque in February
2003. “The evidence led us to
believe that the operative group consisted of Americans,” the investigator,
Bruno Megale, the head of Milan’s antiterrorism police force, told a packed
court. “Some of the phones had called numbers in the United States, some had
called the state of Virginia,” where the Central Intelligence Agency has its
headquarters. During a courtroom break,
the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, suggested that the few steps needed to
uncover the American operation could indicate that the people involved felt
they had “some sort of impunity,” noting the number of Italian officials also
accused in the kidnapping. Mr. Megale spoke on the
second day of testimony in the trial of 26 Americans - all but one identified
as C.I.A. operatives - charged in the disappearance of the imam, Hassan
Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, as part of the contentious American
program of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are kidnapped
on foreign soil. In this case, the Americans are accused of whisking Mr. Nasr
to his native Egypt, where he claims he was repeatedly beaten and tortured. The case is sensitive in the
United States as the first trial dissecting the extraordinary rendition
program and also here in Italy, since several top Italian officials -
including the nation’s former spy chief, Nicolò Pollari - have also been
charged. The question is how high up in the Italian government - led then, as
now, by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi - any approval went. The Americans are being
tried in absentia. Italy did not officially ask that the American defendants
be extradited and United States officials have said that in any case they
would not honor such a request. During nearly six hours of
testimony, Mr. Megale described the ripple effect of an investigation that
started after 17 cellphones were identified in the area where the imam was
abducted. Robert Seldon Lady, the
C.I.A. station chief in Milan at the time, who is a defendant, used at least
one phone, Mr. Megale testified. Several other phones, which were used again
a year later in Rome, led investigators to deduce that they were the property
of the United States Embassy in Italy, Mr. Megale said. He said Mr. Nasr - who he
said was an “extremist” preaching “violent and harsh sermons” - had been
under investigation by the Italian authorities as part of a group recruiting
suicide bombers to send to Iraq. The Italian authorities have
repeatedly complained that the abduction destroyed the case and muddied leads
intended to track down other suspected terrorists. Copyright 2008 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/europe/29italy.html |