CIA on trial as Italy brings charges over torture flights

Published on Saturday 17 February 2007 00:26

ITALY will hold the first criminal trial over the United States Central Intelligence Agency's "extraordinary rendition" programme after a judge yesterday indicted 26 Americans and five Italians for the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric.

The Milan trial is set for 8 June, although the Americans, who have all left the country, almost certainly will not be returned to Italy.

Prosecutors allege that five Italian intelligence officials worked with the Americans - all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents - to abduct terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street on 17 February, 2003.

Mr Nasr was allegedly transferred by vehicle to the Aviano Air Base near Venice and then flown to the Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany and onward to Egypt, where he was held for four years and, according to his lawyer, tortured. He was freed earlier this week by an Egyptian court that ruled his detention was "unfounded".

The CIA refused to comment on the case yesterday, which has put an uncomfortable spotlight on intelligence operations and a strain in US-European relations over how to combat terrorism as the anti-rendition mood grows across the continent.

The Swiss government this week approved plans to investigate the flight that allegedly took Mr Nasr over its air space from Italy to Germany. And a Munich prosecutor recently issued arrest warrants for 13 people in connection with the alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping of a German citizen.

Despite the indictments, the Milan case faced another hurdle after the government asked the Constitutional Court to rule on whether prosecutors overstepped their bounds by tapping phone conversations of Italian secret service agents.

The government has said it will wait for a ruling - which could suspend the trial even before it starts - to respond to prosecutors' request to extradite the agents.

The moves drew a scathing response from Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro, who said that the extradition request was made to the previous government of Silvio Berlusconi before any Italian agents had been implicated in the request and should not be linked.

He also denied that prosecutors violated any laws involving evidence.

"The law allows the government to give a negative response, but not to fail to respond to the extradition request," Mr Spataro said. "The silence of this government by now exceeds the length of silence of the previous government."

Even if Italy requests the Americans' extradition it is unlikely that the agents would be turned over for prosecution.

All but one of the Americans have been identified as CIA agents, including the former Milan CIA station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, the former Rome station chief, Jeffrey Castelli and US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Romano, who was stationed at the time at Aviano.

Prosecutors believe many of the other American names in the indictment are aliases.

Among the Italians indicted by Judge Caterina Interlandi was the former chief of military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, and his former deputy, Marco Mancini. Mr Pollari has denied any involvement by Italian intelligence officers.