Oscar Magi

Italy at best 'complacent' in CIA kidnapping


Trial judge sees Italian authorities likely to be involved in kidnapping of Egyptian imam.


ROME - Italian authorities were at best "complacent" in February 2003 when US CIA agents snatched an Egyptian imam from a street in Milan in broad daylight, trial judge Oscar Magi said Monday.

"There was knowledge... or maybe complacency," Magi said in a detailed justification for his conviction in November of 23 US and two Italian secret agents for kidnapping.

The case involved Washington's "extraordinary rendition" programme, which was launched in 2003 by then-US president George W. Bush and saw scores of terror suspects returned to their home countries, some of which were known to practise torture.

The US State Department has expressed its disappointment over the sentencing of the CIA's Milan station chief at the time, Robert Seldon Lady, to eight years in prison and the other Americans to five years, all in their absence.

The CIA chief for Italy at the time, Jeffrey Castelli, and the then-head of Italian military intelligence SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, were protected by state secrecy rules, while two other American defendants benefited from diplomatic immunity.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, an imam better known as Abu Omar, was snatched from a Milan street on February 17, 2003, in an operation coordinated by the CIA and SISMI.

The opposition figure, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy, was allegedly taken to the Aviano Air Base, a US military installation in northeastern Italy, then flown to the US base in Ramstein, Germany, and on to Cairo, where he says he was tortured.

The imam's suspected captors failed to take many standard precautions, notably speaking openly on cell phones, leaving investigators to suspect that the Americans had cleared their intentions with senior Italian intelligence officials.

Dick Marty, author of an explosive Council of Europe report on the CIA extraordinary rendition programme, hailed Magi's conclusions, saying "Italy's justice system did its job well."

Marty's report, released in June 2006, said the CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate terror suspects with the authorisation of the countries' presidents.

In a telephone interview, Marty lamented that the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama has not fully delivered on campaign pledges over the handling of terror suspects.

"There's a big gap between the promises made and the facts," Marty said.

"They haven't really taken the CIA head-on," he said, adding however: "Obama can't change things on his own."

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