An Italian court yesterday found twenty-three US secret agents guilty of the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr or Abu Omar, an Egyptian imam who was abducted from a Milan street on February 17th 2003. Omar was resident in Italy at the time because he had been granted political asylum in the country. He was allegedly subsequently taken to two European US air bases and then flown to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
The trial is the first in the world to have focused on the CIA’s use of “extraordinary renditions” for terror suspects. “Extraordinary rendition” is defined as “the practice of apprehension and illegal transfer of a suspect from one state to another for questioning and / or imprisonment.”. It has also become known as “torture by proxy” as the suspects are often transferred to states known to practice torture in interrogations.
All the US citizens were tried in absentia as they had left Italy when they were suspected of being involved in the abduction. Twenty-two of them have been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and Robert Seldon Lady, the former head of the CIA in Milan, received an eight-year sentence. Judge Oscar Magi acquitted another three US citizens because of their diplomatic immunity. Nicolò Pollari, the former head of SISMI, formerly Italy’s military intelligence service, and his former deputy, Marco Mancini, could not be sentenced because of State secrecy. Otherwise they would have been sentenced to 13 and 10 years’ imprisonment respectively. [SISMI was replaced by AISE under reform of the Italian Intelligence Services approved in 2007.]
All the convicted Americans will appeal but even if the verdict is upheld it is unlikely that there will be any extraditions. The US State Department yesterday said that it was “disappointed” by the verdict. Meanwhile, Abu Omar’s lawyer wants to claim 14 million euros in damages for his client. Mr Omar now lives in Egypt. A Human Rights Watch spokesperson said that the verdict was courageous.
Do you agree that the verdict was courageous?
