http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/16/news/cia.php

Italy indicts CIA agents in abduction of terror suspects

By Ian Fisher
Published: February 16, 2007

ROME: An Italian judge ordered the first trial involving the U.S. program of kidnapping terror suspects on foreign soil, indicting 26 Americans Friday, most of them CIA agents, and also Italy's former top spy.

The indictments concerned the alleged kidnapping of a radical Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who disappeared near his mosque in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, was freed this week from jail in Egypt, where he says he was taken and then tortured.

Despite the indictment, issued by a judge in Milan, it is unlikely that any of the Americans will ever stand trial here.

All the operatives, including the top two CIA officials in Italy at the time, have left the country. Moreover, Italy has not requested their extradition; if it did, there seems little chance that the Bush administration would agree.

But the indictment nonetheless was a turning point in Europe, where anger is high at the secret American program in which terrorism suspects were whisked away in a process known as "extraordinary rendition" in contravention of the law after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

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In the past week, the Swiss government approved an investigation into the flight that is alleged to have carried Nasr from Italy to Germany, over Swiss airspace. The plane reportedly then flew from an American base in Germany to Egypt.

Late last month, a German court issued an arrest warrant for 13 people suspected of involvement in the kidnapping in Macedonia of a German citizen of Lebanese descent. There are also investigations into extraordinary renditions in Portugal and Spain.

Also in the past week, a European parliamentary committee issued a detailed report on what it said were "at least" 1,245 secret CIA flights in Europe, some of them involving extraordinary renditions.

The report is particularly sensitive because it suggests forcibly that a number of governments knew of the flights.

"We believe there has been either active collusion by several EU governments or turning a blind eye," said a member of the EU Parliament, Sarah Ludford of Britain.

In Italy, the possible complicity of the government of Silvio Berlusconi, who was prime minister at the time of the alleged abduction, is one of the most difficult issues in the case. Among the Italians indicted Friday were Nicolo Pollari, who until earlier this year was Italy's chief of military intelligence, and his former deputy, Marco Mancini.

Pollari has denied responsibility, saying he cannot defend himself because he would need to use evidence that is classified as state secrets. The implication is that officials outranking Pollari, the nation's chief spy, gave approval for the kidnapping.

"We are very disappointed by the decision of the judge, being convinced that the lack of proof and the acquisition of documents covered by secrets of state demonstrates Pollari's innocence," Pollari's lawyer, Tittal Madia, said, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The case has several complications for Italian politics.

The government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi asked the Constitutional Court in the past week to review whether the prosecutor in Nasr's case, Armando Spataro, had overstepped his bounds by wiretapping the phones of Italian agents.

On Friday, Spataro said in a statement that he was "astonished" by the government's move and that he had followed all the laws in gathering evidence.

Meanwhile, a member of Prodi's government, Antonio Di Pietro, minister of infrastructure and a former corruption prosecutor, criticized the government for not having requested the extradition of the 26 CIA agents.

Prodi's government has not said whether it will make such a request. But the issue looms as a source of conflict between Italy and the United States.

While both American and Italian officials say the relationship between the two countries remains solid, it has been tested in recent months on several fronts. On Saturday, a big demonstration is planned in Vicenza, in northern Italy, where the Americans have asked to enlarge an existing air base, and Italian officials have recently criticized American actions in Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia.

Earlier this month, an Italian court ordered an American soldier to stand trial for the death in Iraq of Nicola Calipari, an Italian secret service agent killed in 2005 while securing the release of a kidnapped Italian journalist. As with the CIA agents, the serviceman is unlikely to be extradited to Italy.