CIA snatch trial goes ahead

CIA snatch trial goes ahead
But intelligence officers to be heard behind closed doors
ANSA (Italy), September 17, 2008 go to original
See Article I.1 Promoting Kidnapping and Renditions for Illegal Torture

Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr: the Milan-based Muslim cleric claims he was tortured after being renditioned to Egypt
source: ANSA

MILAN, ITALY -- A landmark Italian trial into the 2003 CIA abduction of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr from Milan went ahead Thursday after the judge rejected a suspension request from Italy's former top military spy.

The request was presented by the defence team of Niccolo' Pollari, the former head of Italian military intelligence SISMI, which is now known as AISE.

Pollari argued the trial should be halted pending the result of a suit filed by Silvio Berlusconi's government against the judge.

The judge, Oscar Magi, ruled that there was no compelling reason for the trial to be halted.

However, he ordered that 20 prosecution witnesses, mainly SISMI agents, should be heard behind closed doors. Earlier, arguing against the suspension request, Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro highlighted the importance of the trial, the keenly awaited first judicial examination of the controversial US practice of 'extraordinary rendition'. ''We have a trial that the Council of Europe and the European Parliament want us to carry out,'' Spataro said.

The Council of Europe, Europe's human rights body, has called Nasr's case a ''perfect example of rendition''.

Nine Italians including Pollari are on trial with 26 CIA agents for Nasr's abduction.

Nasr, the former head of Milan's main mosque, disappeared from the northern city on February 17, 2003.

Prosecutors say he was snatched by a team of CIA operatives with SISMI's help and whisked off to a NATO base in Ramstein, Germany, on board a Gulfstream jet belonging to the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

From there, he was allegedly taken to Egypt to be interrogated under duress.

Nasr, who was under investigation in Italy on suspicion of helping terrorists, was released early last year from an Egyptian jail where he says he was tortured and threatened with rape.

He has demanded millions of euros in compensation from the Italian government.

Berlusconi, who was in power at the time of the events, has been called to testify.

Romano Prodi, his predecessor and successor, has also been admitted as a witness. Judge Magi also gave his green light to calling ex-defense ministers.

A request that the government officials testify was presented by Pollari's lawyers to support their claim that he had nothing to do with the abduction of Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.

In particular, they will be asked to confirm whether or not details on Nasr's kidnapping were to be considered state secrets.

The trial resumed in April, after two lengthy suspensions, when Magi decided he didn't need to wait for a high court ruling on a clash between state powers over Nasr's abduction.

According to the judge, waiting for that verdict would violate Italy's Constitutional requirement for a ''reasonable'' trial length.

Trial Pits Government Against Prosecutors

The case has pitted the Milan prosecutors against the government.

The government contends the prosecutors overstepped their Constitutional bounds, needlessly exposing agents and straining US-Italian security ties.

The prosecutors say the government acted illegitimately in trying to cover up actions which subverted Italy's Constitution.

The trial opened in June 2007 but was adjourned two weeks later pending a Constitutional Court ruling.

Last year the European Parliament (EP) rapped three countries including Italy for allowing the US to fly terror suspects to foreign locations where they are believed to have been tortured.

The Italian rapporteur in that EP inquiry, MEP Claudio Fava, lobbied for the trial to proceed.

He presented a petition from 300 people including European magistrates, Italian civil rights leaders and ordinary citizens accusing the government of obstructing justice.

The 300 claimed state secrecy ''has been brandished too many times by too many governments with the sole aim of depriving this country of its right to the truth''.

The 26 CIA agents, including ex-Rome chief Robert Seldon Lady and ex-Milan chief Jeff Castelli, were put on trial in absentia.

Pollari is on trial along with his former deputy Marco Mancini and five SISMI agents.

The prosecution has called more than 100 witnesses, including Dick Marty, head of a Council of Europe (COE) probe which concluded that 100 persons had been kidnapped by the CIA in Europe and rendered to a country where they might be tortured.

The report from Europe's top human rights body claims the US made a secret deal with NATO in October 2001 to permit the CIA flights and also supply aid to countries threatened by terrorism.

The COE claims the CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2002 to 2005 with the knowledge of the two countries' presidents.

Prosecutors in several other European countries are now probing CIA flights.

The US admits renditions but denies torture - although the legal status of admitted techniques such as waterboarding is controversial.

The US State Department described the EP report as ''unfair, inaccurate and distorted''.

The CIA was first granted permission to use rendition in a presidential directive signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and the practice grew sharply after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The US recently said it had suspended its rendition programme but news media have claimed it has been farmed out to other countries, especially in the Horn of Africa.