Italian court set to try CIA agents in kidnapping, torture case

An Italian court issued indictments against 25 CIA operatives and a US Air Force officer on Feb. 16, charging them with kidnapping a radical Muslim cleric in Milan four years ago. "We've not got an extradition request from Italy. If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite US officials to Italy," John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told journalists after meeting legal advisers to EU governments. Bellinger's statement was the first time that a US government official has directly addressed the Italian criminal investigation, which is expected to produce the first overseas trial of CIA officers involved in a covert counterterrorism operation. The operatives all have left Italy; their trial is scheduled to open on June 8 in Milan. Italian prosecutors say they will try the US defendants in absentia, if necessary. It will be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition program to secretly transfer terror suspects to third countries, where critics say they may have been tortured. The 26 are accused in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street in 2003. Prosecutors say a CIA-led team grabbed Omar off a Milan street in February 2003, bundled him into a van and drove him to Aviano Air Base near Venice, Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, and then to Egypt, where he was held for four years and tortured with electric shocks, beatings, rape threats and genital abuse. He has been freed by an Egyptian court that ruled his detention was "unfounded." Among those indicted for the 2003 abduction are Jeff Castelli, former CIA chief in Rome, former CIA Milan station chief Robert Lady and a former head of Italy's SISMI military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari. In a separate case, a German court issued arrest warrants on Jan. 31 for 13 CIA operatives accused of kidnapping a German citizen in Macedonia in December 2003. German authorities have said they are unlikely to make a formal extradition request to the US government or go to trial. But the ongoing European criminal investigations and other probes into CIA activity on the Continent have soured relations with the Bush administration. Many European lawmakers and human rights groups have accused the CIA of violating European sovereignty and international law by covertly apprehending and detaining terrorism suspects on the Continent. They have also criticized European intelligence services for taking part in the operations or failing to stop them. The European Parliament accused Britain, Poland, Italy and other nations in mid-February of colluding with the CIA to transport terror suspects to clandestine prisons in third countries. In a report that concluded a yearlong investigation, the parliament identified 1,254 secret CIA flights that entered the European airspace since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States. It said that these flights were against international air traffic rules and suggested some of them may have carried terror suspects on board in violation of human rights principles. "Instead of stonewalling investigations into its and other governments' illegal renditions activities, the United States should support its allies' efforts to bring perpetrators to justice," Jumana Musa, Amnesty International's US advocacy director for domestic human rights and international justice, said in a statement. "The United States must recognize that it has obligations under US and international law to seek accountability for agents who participated in activities that led to torture."