ITALY: An Italian judge has called for the arrest of 13 CIA operatives in relation to the kidnapping of Egyptian imam and alleged terrorist Abu Omar, who disappeared in Milan on February 17th, 2003.
Arrest warrants issued by Milan-based judge Chiara Nobili allege that 42-year-old Abu Omar was kidnapped in Milan, transferred to the US base of Aviano, northern Italy, and then flown to Egypt for questioning, as part of a "rendition" operation.
Abu Omar (whose full name is Nasr Osama Mustafa Hassan) had first come to Italy via Afghanistan and Albania in 1997.
Bugs placed by Italian police in the Milan mosques of Via Quaranta and Viale Jenner soon revealed the imam to be a recruitment agent, an Islamic radical who called on young people to offer themselves up as suicide bombers in various jihads or holy wars. The Italian secret service, the DIGOS, allegedly discovered links not only between Abu Omar and al-Qaeda but also between him and the infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Given that Abu Omar was under close surveillance, it was not difficult to trace no less than 17 mobile phones being used repeatedly during a five-minute period in and around the imam's Milan home on the day of his disappearance.
Those phones, supplied by Italian mobile phone companies, traced to some of the 13 agents who had checked into the Hilton, Sheraton, Gallia and Principe di Savoia hotels in Milan on the week of Abu Omar's disappearance. Italian agents have collected the names (presumably false), credit cards, US addresses, passport numbers and photos of the 13 agents, who include three women.
Suspicion that Abu Omar might have been kidnapped in the course of an "extraordinary rendition" operation was fuelled by the testimony of a woman witness who was in Via Guerzoni on the day he disappeared.
As she walked out of a nearby park, she allegedly saw two men, in Italian police uniforms, spray something in Abu Omar's face and then bundle him into the back of a van. In US Congressional hearings subsequent to the 9/11 attacks, senior CIA agents have admitted carrying out more than 70 "extraordinary rendition" operations, involving the kidnapping of terrorist suspects in "foreign" lands and their subsequent transfer to their home countries, without court approval.
Although US government sources have always denied any involvement in violence or torture practised on these "prisoners", critics of the policy have dubbed it "outsourcing torture".
Confirmation that Abu Omar was indeed transferred to Egypt emerged in April of last year when DIGOS agents picked up phone calls from him to his wife, still living in Milan, and to another Milan-based imam. In these calls, he claimed to have been abducted to Egypt and then tortured with electric shock treatment. Since those April 2004 phone calls, nothing more has been heard of Abu Omar in Italy.
In a warrant issued in Milan last month, in relation to a group of Tunisians with suspected terrorist connections, another judge, Guido Salvini, made reference to the Abu Omar case, writing: "It is now possible to affirm with certainty that he [ Abu Omar] was kidnapped by people belonging to foreign intelligence services who wished to interrogate and neutralise him before handing him over to the Egyptian authorities."
Italian government and US embassy spokespersons declined to comment on the matter yesterday.