MILAN, 17 February 2007 — An Italian judge yesterday ordered a trial for 26 Americans and five Italians over the alleged abduction of an Egyptian cleric in what will be the first criminal trial over the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.
Prosecutors allege that five Italian intelligence officials worked with the Americans — almost all CIA agents — to abduct terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. However, even if a request is made for the Americans’ extradition — a move bound to irritate US-Italian relations — it is unlikely that the United States would turn over the CIA agents for a trial abroad. In Italy, defendants can be tried in absentia. The CIA has refused to comment on the case.
The trial is set to begin on June 8, but the proceedings could be suspended by Italy’s Constitutional Court, which has been asked by the government to rule on whether prosecutors overstepped their bounds in the case by ordering wiretaps of Italian agents’ phone calls.
Nasr was allegedly snatched from a street in Milan and driven to the Aviano Air Force base near Venice, from where he was flown to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and then on to Egypt, where his lawyers say he was tortured.
All but one of the American suspects have been identified as CIA agents, including the former station chiefs in Rome and Milan. The other is a US Air Force officer stationed at the time at Aviano.
Prosecutors say the alleged kidnapping operation was a breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised Italy’s own anti-terrorism efforts.
Nasr was under investigation for terrorism-related activities at the time of his abduction, and Milan prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest more than two years after he disappeared from Milan, while he was in Egyptian custody.
Nasr was released earlier this week from jail. His lawyer in Egypt said in an interview on Italian state TV that he wants to return to Italy, where he had been granted the status of political refugee.
The case has put an uncomfortable spotlight on intelligence operations, as prosecutors press the Italian government to seek the extradition of the US agents. The previous government of Silvio Berlusconi refused, and Premier Romano Prodi’s center-left government has yet to make its decision. The US agents all have court-appointed lawyers, who have acknowledged having no contact with their clients. But having a trial will mean that the agents’ side of the story can be heard, said lawyer Alessia Sorgato.
“I’m happy because I will be able to fully argue the case,” said Sorgato, who represents three of the Americans but has had to mount a defense without speaking with any of them.
Sorgato and fellow lawyer Guido Meroni, who represents six Americans, have argued that the evidence connecting their clients to Nasr’s disappearance was circumstantial, based on phone records and their presence in locations in Italy before the abduction. Among those indicted by Milan Judge Caterina Interlandi was the former Italian chief of military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, and his former deputy Marco Mancini.
Pollari, the only defendant who appeared during the preliminary hearing, has insisted that Italian intelligence played no role in the alleged abduction, and told the judge he was unable to defend himself properly because documents clarifying his position had been excluded from the proceedings because they contain state secrets.
Two other suspects in the case reached plea bargains; an Italian police officer who admitted stopping Nasr and requesting his identity papers during the course of the abduction was given a suspended sentence of one year, nine months and a day.
