A Muslim cleric who was allegedly kidnapped in Milan four years ago and taken to Egypt by a team of CIA operatives, with the suspected complicity of the Italian secret service, was been released by Egyptian authorites.
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was the imam of Milan's main mosque when he disappeared from the northern Italian city on February 17, 2003.
Italian Prosecutors say Nasr was snatched by a team of CIA operatives with the help of Italian military intelligence (SISMI) and taken via Germany to Egypt.
Abu Omar was granted parole for a brief period in 2004 but was re-arrested after he told family member that he had been tortured.
Last April the testified before a Cairo court of appeals that he had been abducted while walking down a street in Milan by "Americans" who first took him to an American base in Italy, from where he was flown to another base in Germany and then taken to Egypt.
The alleged abduction is one of the most high-profile cases of supposed "extraordinary rendition", the US practice of secretly transporting terrorism suspects to third countries to be interrogated.
According to reports in the Egyptian press, Abu Omar was interrogated about a visit he paid to Afghanistan and whether he had ties with the al Qaeda terror group.
There have also been reports that the CIA was seeking to turn the cleric into an informer.
In 2004, he claimed he was tortured in an attempt to force him to say that he had returned to Egypt on his own aboard an Egypt air flight.
An attorney for Abu Omar said on Monday that he client would make no statements to the press and "he wants to live in peace and raise his children".
Preliminary hearings are currently under way in Milan to decide whether 32 people, including former SISMI chief Nocolo Pollari and a group of suspected CIA operatives, should be brought to trial on kidnapping charges.
