Abu Omar was abducted on February 17, 2003, in Milan by agents of the SISMI and CIA,[1] and transported to the Aviano Air Base, from which he was transferred to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years without charges, secluded, interrogated and "brutally tortured by America's long-standing ally, the Mubarak regime."[2][3] The CIA operation interrupted a surveillance program that was being carried out by Italian authorities into Nasr's alleged participation in Islamist organizations. Hassan Nasr was released by an Egyptian court in February 2007, which ruled that his detention was "unfounded". He has been indicted for international terrorism offenses in Italy since 2005.[4]
The Italian government originally denied having played any role in the abduction. However, Italian prosecutors Armando Spataro and Ferdinand Enrico Pomarici indicted 26 CIA agents, including the Rome station chief and head of CIA in Italy until 2003, Jeffrey W. Castelli, and Milan chief of base Robert Seldon Lady, as well as SISMI head General Nicolò Pollari, his second Marco Mancini and station chiefs Raffaele Ditroia, Luciano Di Gregori and Giuseppe Ciorra.[5] Referring to the Italian military intelligence agency, the Italian press has talked of a "CIA-SISMI concerted operation." The prosecutors sent extradition requests for the indicted American citizens to the Italian Ministry of Justice, then headed by Roberto Castelli, for onward transmission to Washington. However, Castelli refused to forward the demand for extradition.
On February 12, 2013, the Court of Appeal in Milan sentenced former SISMI director Nicolò Pollari, his deputy director Marco Mancini, former Rome CIA station chief Castelli and two other CIA employees to up to 10 years in jail.[9] Pollari has announced he will appeal against this ruling at the Corte Suprema di Cassazione. On February 24, 2014, the Corte Suprema di Cassazione, following a sentence of the Italian Corte Costituzionale regarding the use of secret evidence in the proceedings, acquitted Pollari and Mancini.
Investigation of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Hasaan Mustafa Osama Nasr was a radical Egyptian cleric and alleged member of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya who had fled Egypt due to that group's prosecution as a terrorist organization by the Egyptian government. He was granted political asylum in Italy in 2001, and held an Italian asylum passport.
As early as Spring 2002, he was under investigation by Italian and American intelligence agencies by means of wiretaps and physical and electronic surveillance. Italian authorities have claimed that they believed that they had evidence Nasr was building a network to recruit terrorists, and possibly had links to Al Qaeda. They alleged in particular links with Ansar al-Islam and ties to a network sending combatants in the Iraqi Kurdistan.[10] However, citing a book on Al-Qaeda by Jason Burke, a British reporter at The Observer, La Repubblica noted in June 2005 that in 2002, before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration was claiming, along with British prime ministerTony Blair, that Iraq maintained close links with Al-Qaeda, in particular through Ansar al-Islam. The Italian newspaper concluded that the Abu Omar case was a "chapter in the combination of intelligence–psychological warfare–information war engaged by Washington and London to justify the invasion of Iraq."[11][12][13] There are also reports that Nasr was involved in plotting a terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Rome,[14] and was suspected of being involved in a plot to bomb a number of children of foreign diplomats attending the American School of Milan, although sources disagree whether such plots even existed.[15]
Most observers have come to believe that Nasr was abducted by the United States as a source of intelligence on foreign combatants being recruited to fight in Iraq, which, at the time, the United States had yet to invade.
Abduction and rendition to Egypt
On February 17, 2003, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr was abducted by persons affiliated with the CIA as he walked to his mosque in Milan for noon prayers.[16]
According to court documents, Nasr was pushed into a minivan on Via Giuseppe Guerzoni in Milan and driven four or five hours to a joint Italian-U.S. air base at Aviano, where he was tortured.[11] From there, he was flown by a Learjet (using the call sign SPAR 92) to Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Germany launched an official investigation due to false imprisonment and coercion, but the case was ultimately dropped as it could not be determined which CIA agents were involved in the abduction.[17][18] SPAR (Special Priority Air Resource) is the call sign used by US senior military officers and civilian VIPs for airlift transport.[19][20] A second plane then took him to Cairo, where he was imprisoned and, he claims, tortured.[14]
In April 2004, while his incarceration had been downgraded to house arrest, Nasr placed several phone calls from Egypt to his family and friends. He told them he had been rendered into the hands of Egypt's SSI at Tura prison, twenty miles south of Cairo.[21] He was subjected to various depredations, tortured by beating and electric shocks to the genitals, raped,[22] and eventually had lost hearing in one ear.[13] At the time of the calls he had been released on the orders of an Egyptian judge because of lack of evidence. Shortly after those calls were made he was re-arrested and placed back in prison.
Nasr was not released again until February 11, 2007, at which time he was permitted to return to his family. After four years of detention, an Egyptian court ruled that his imprisonment was "unfounded."[23]
In 2006, Nasr's lawyer Montasser el-Zayat said Nasr was underfed but there were "no signs of torture."[24]
Investigation and warrants for CIA operatives
The CIA agents were implicated, in part, by extensive cellphone records which allowed Milan police to reconstruct their movements for the nine days they were in the city. Because the agents had apparently not, at any time, removed the batteries from their cellphones, investigators were able to pinpoint their locations from moment to moment. The agents also made numerous phone calls to the US consulate in Milan, to northern Virginia (where the CIA headquarters are located) and to friends and family in the United States.
The operation was led by Robert Seldon Lady, former CIA chief of base in Milan, who was then operating out of the U.S. embassy under diplomatic cover as the "Consul of the United States in Milan." The operation was carried out by the CIA's Special Activities Division.[14] Lady has said that he opposed the abduction plans, but was overruled.[25] Lady has since retired from the CIA, which puts him in a precarious legal position, as the status of his diplomatic immunity is now in doubt.[26]
In December 2005, CIA DirectorPorter Goss ordered a sweeping review of the agency's field operations because of what he perceived as the Milan rendition's "sloppiness".[27]
In June 2005, Italian judge Guido Salvini issued warrants for the arrest of 22 persons said to be agents or operatives of the CIA, including Jeffrey W. Castelli, head of the CIA in Italy until 2003.[16] Salvini said the abduction was illegal because it violated Italian sovereignty and international law and disrupted an ongoing police investigation. He also issued a warrant for the arrest of Nasr, on charges of associating with terrorists.
In November 2005, Italian prosecutors requested that Italy's Justice Ministry seek the extradition of the suspects from the United States. The Italian government declined.
It is possible that some of the names for the targets of the warrant were pseudonyms. Regarding "Eliana Castaldo", a reporter's attempts to contact her through the number listed on the affidavit produced inconsistent responses: one refused to identify the business, another said she was with an answering service, while a third said the number was that of a firm by the name of Washburn and Company. Each of the persons answering denied there was an Eliana Castaldo reachable at that number.[30]
The abduction occurred without the knowledge of the Italian intelligence and law enforcement officials working directly on the Nasr case, who initially suspected that Nasr had been kidnapped by the Egyptian government, possibly with the cooperation of other branches of the Italian government. When the Italians questioned their American counterparts about Nasr's disappearance, they were told he had traveled voluntarily to the Balkans.[13]
Furthermore, Italian officials initially denied the Italian government had authorized or sanctioned a US operation to kidnap Nasr. Italian Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Carlo Giovanardi, member of Silvio Berlusconi's second and third government, said in no uncertain terms to the Italian parliament: "Our secret services were not aware of the operation ... It was never brought to the attention of the government or national institutions."
However, former CIA officials contradicted this by claiming the agency had secured the consent of Italian intelligence, and that the CIA's station chief in Rome, Jeffrey W. Castelli, had been granted explicit permission for the operation by his Italian counterpart.[14] Furthermore, the circumstances of Nasr's abduction tended to accredit the thesis of at least passive support of the operation by Italian intelligence services. In particular, questions were raised by the CIA agents' startling laxity in travel arrangements. By all accounts, they did little to cover their tracks. Instead of fleeing immediately, most of them remained in Italy days after the operation, in some of Milan's best hotels. Only some of them used aliases. The rest traveled with their normal passports and drivers licenses, paid for things with credit cards in their real names, chatted openly on cell phones before, during, and after the operation. After the abduction, they even carelessly bypassed speed limits in Milan. Some have speculated this represents evidence of Italian complicity, as little apparent effort was made to obfuscate the identities of the participants.[14]
This hypothesis was confirmed by Italian investigations. On July 5, 2006, two high-ranking Italian intelligence officers were arrested by Italian police for their complicity in Abu Omar's kidnapping. These included Marco Mancini, number 2 of SISMI, Italy's military intelligence agency, and Gustavo Pignero, the agency's chief for the northern region of Italy. Italian wiretaps caught Mancini admitting that he had lied about his involvement in the abduction case.[31] These arrests signaled the first official admission that Italian intelligence agents were involved in the abduction. Additionally, the former head of SISMI's Milan office, Col. Stefano D'Ambrosio, claims that he was removed from his position by his superiors because of his objections to the abduction plot; he was later replaced by Mancini.[31]
Thus, public prosecutors Armando Spataro and Pomarici have described the abduction as "a concerted CIA-SISMI operation" organized by "Italian and American agents" with the aim of the "capture" and "secret transfer" of the imam to Egypt.[32] Paolo Biondani and Italian counter-terrorist expert Guido Olimpio cited the November 18, 2005, article published by Dana Priest in The Washington Post, where she described the CTIC (Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Center), a "joint operation centers in more than two dozen countries where U.S. and foreign intelligence officers work side by side to track and capture suspected terrorists and to destroy or penetrate their networks.[33] " Italy was not included in this international alliance of intelligence agencies, which largest base was in Paris, named Alliance Base.
According to Guido Olimpio and Paolo Biondani, Italy was not included in the CTIC because of internal jealousy between various Italian intelligence agencies. But they noted that, despite that, the arrest ordinance against Marco Mancini and his superior General Gustavo Pignero referred to the operation as an example of the "non orthodox activity" (the only one known of) realized by the CIA and the SISMI "since 2002," thus demonstrating some sort of cooperation between US and Italian intelligence agencies, albeit not in the frame of the CTIC.
Furthermore, according to testimonies by SISMI agents to the Italian justice, Mancini proposed himself to the CIA as a "double agent[32] " According to Colonel Stefano D'Ambrosio, former SISMI responsible in Milan replaced by Mancini, the CIA refused to hire the latter because they considered him too "venal." But his demand "left traces in the computer" of the US intelligence.[32] All SISMI testimonies converge in saying that Mancini owed his dazzling career to his "privileged relations with the CIA.[32] " According to SISMI testimony, after the February 17, 2003 kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Nasr, then CIA director George Tenet sent a letter to SISMI General Nicolò Pollari in August 2003, to which Mancini would allegedly owe the real reasons of his promotion to number two of the SISMI.[32] In another, earlier article, the same author, Guido Olimpio, wrote that following the abduction of the imam, SISMI informed the Italian government and then the CIA, assuring them that no agent who had taken part in this covert operation would be prosecuted. In turn, CIA director George Tenet would have sent a letter to Forte Braschi, the SISMI headquarters in Rome.[34]
Furthermore, apart from the July 2006 arrest of Marco Mancini, number two of the SISMI, and of Gustavo Pignero, the agency's chief for the northern region of Italy, the head of SISMI General Nicolò Pollari had to resign in November 2006 because of the affair and was indicted in December by the Milanese judges.
The trial
In addition to the 22 European arrest warrants issued in December 2005 and the arrest of the above-mentioned SISMI officers, an Italian judge issued additional arrest warrants for four Americans, three CIA agents and for Lieutenant Colonel Joseph L. Romano III, commander of security forces at the Aviano Air Base at the time, now working at Section 31b of the Pentagon.[35] Ultimately, twenty-six Americans and nine Italians (including head of SISMI Nicolò Pollari, number two of the same intelligence agency Marco Mancini, as well as General Gustavo Pignero; and also the junior ROS officer Giuliano Pironi) were indicted.[36] The trial would be the first criminal trial related to the U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition.[25]
The start of the trial was set for June 8, 2007, although it was adjourned until October 2007, pending an upcoming ruling by Italy's Constitutional Court regarding the possible violation of state secrecy laws by Milan prosecutors who used phone taps on Italian agents during their investigation.[37]
Two other Italian suspects reached plea bargains. Giuliano Pironi, who admitted stopping Nasr and controlling his identity during the kidnapping, was given a suspended sentence of one year, nine months and a day. Renato Farina, vice-director of Libero newspaper, who was hired by the SISMI in 1999,[38] was accused as an accessory. He was given six months sentence that was converted into a fine.[23] Carabinieri Pironi testified that he asked for Nasr' identity papers on Robert Lady's request, and assured that the operation was a concerted CIA-SISMI operation.[39] The first one to confess the involvement of the CIA and the SISMI in the abduction of Abu Omar, Pironi thought, when he participated in the operation, that he was passing a test to enter the SISMI. He later realized he had been instrumentalized[40]
Marco Mancini admitted to Milan prosecutors having followed orders of his superior General Pignero, who himself obeyed requests from Jeff Castelli, CIA head in Italy, to the director of the SISMI, General Pollari. Mancini confessed having organised a meeting in Bologna with all the heads of the SISMI centers. He illustrated on this occasion the plan for the abduction. The arrest warrants issued on June 15, 2006, against Jeff Castelli, other US agents, Mancini and Pignero were done on these grounds.[39]
In the meantime, Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro found out the existence of an office, in the centre of Rome, linked to SISMI, in charge of 'secret operations.' It was directed by a close collaborator of head of SISMI Pollari. According to the European Parliament "Temporary Committee on the Alleged Use of European Countries by the CIA for the Transport and the Illegal Detention of Prisoners", headed by rapporteur Giovanni Claudio Fava:
The main target of this office consisted in distorting the national press information, through journalists ad hoc hired by SISMI, by editing false reports with the aim to keep high the "terrorism alert" vis-à-vis the public opinion. Among the duties also the one of chasing and tapping the communications of the two journalists of the newspaper "La Repubblica" in charge of the Abu Omar case: Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo.[39]
In a secretly registered conversation General Pignero, Mancini's superior, confirmed having met SISMI director Pollari right after a meeting with Jeff Castelli, head of the CIA in Italy. He said on this occasion that he had received by Pollari a list of names, among others that of Abu Omar, and to have been ordered to observe the Egyptian cleric in view of his abduction. Pignero then ordered Mancini to proceed with all these activities.[39]
Interrogated by the Milan prosecutor in July 2006, General Pollari involved the Italian government and invoked a classified document. Romano Prodi's government has confirmed its classified status.[39] During his hearing in August 2006 before the Italian Parliamentary Committee on Secret services control (Copaco), Pollari defended himself again invoking the raison d'état.[39]
In October 2006, prosecutor Spataro transmitted to the European Temporary Committee a copy of a SISMI document, from which it comes out that SISMI was informed by the CIA on May 15, 2003, that Abu Omar was interrogated in Cairo by Egyptian services.[39]Enrico Micheli[it], the Italian government's responsible for secret services, declared to the European committee that the Berlusconi administration had classified files related to the Abu Omar case, and that the Prodi administration confirmed such secrecy.[39]
Any trial of American citizens is expected to happen in absentia. The United States is not expected to extradite the CIA operatives. As of February 2007, the Italian government has issued no extradition requests, although the Italian judiciary has been calling for the government to do so since 2005. Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, member of the new government of Romano Prodi, Prime minister of Italy since the 2006 general election, has still given no news of the extradition request given to him by Armando Spataro, the Milanese public prosecutor. Current Minister of Infrastructures and former prosecutor of Milan, Antonio di Pietro, has criticized on February 15, 2007, his governmental colleagues, claiming that the refuse to transmit the extradition requests to the US abounded to "cover an illegal operation, the kidnapping of a person."[41]
Freed on February 11, 2007, Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr has deposed a complaint against former Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, demanding 10 million Euro of damage and interests "for his implication in the kidnapping as chief of the government [during the events] and for having permitted the CIA to capture him."[36][42]
The Italian executive has opposed the judges in Milan, by deposing a recourse before the Constitutional Court against Armando Spataro, charging him of having violated state secret by using the wiretaps recordings of SISMI agents.[36] In particular, Romano Prodi's government accused the magistrates of having revealed the identity of 85 foreign and Italian spies.[41] The Italian government has said it will wait for the ruling before issuing the extradition requests.[43]
On November 4, 2009, an Italian judge convicted 22 suspected or known CIA agents, a U.S. Air Force (USAF) colonel and two Italian secret agents of the kidnap, delivering the first legal convictions in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.[44][45][46] Former Milan CIA base chief Robert Seldon Lady received eight years in prison. The rest of the Americans, including former Milan U.S. consular official Sabrina De Sousa, and USAF Lieutenant Colonel Joseph L. Romano, at the time of conviction commander of the 37th Training Group at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, got five years each.[44][47] The convicts were also ordered to each pay €1million to Nasr and €500,000 to his wife.[48] Three Americans, including the then-Rome CIA station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other diplomats formerly assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, as well as the former head of Italian military intelligence Nicolo Pollari and four other Italian secret service agents were acquitted due to diplomatic immunity.[49]
All but two Italians were tried in absentia, and, as long as the verdicts remain in place, the 23 convicted Americans cannot travel to Europe without risking arrest.[44] U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly expressed disappointment over the verdicts.[47]Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff S. Morrell said that the judge had ignored requests for Lieutenant Colonel Romano's case to be moved to the United States, adding that "Our view is the Italian court has no jurisdiction over Lieutenant Colonel Romano and should have immediately dismissed the charges. Now that they have not, we will, of course, explore what options we have going forward."[47] The CIA declined to comment.[47] Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denied knowledge of any kidnap operation, and criticized the trial claiming that it could hurt Italy's international reputation.[47]
In September 2012, Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, upheld the guilty verdicts that had been handed down by lower courts.[50] The Italian government has not stated whether it would seek extradition of the convicted Americans.[51]
On February 13, 2013, the Milano Court of Appeals sentenced former SISMI director Nicolò Pollari to ten years in jail and awarded €1.5 million in damages to Abu Omar and his wife. Pollari's deputy director Marco Mancini has been sentenced to nine years in jail, the former CIA station chief Jeffrey Castelli in absentia to seven years in jail, along with two other CIA employees. Pollari has announced he will appeal against this ruling at the Corte Suprema di Cassazione.
Sabrina De Sousa was detained at the Lisbon airport in Portugal on October 5, 2015. She was due to be extradited to Italy, but a partial pardon from the Italian president – in February 2017 – reduced the sentence from four to three years which was then commuted to community service for which extradition is not possible.[52] The original sentence was already reduced from seven to four years through a general amnesty law in 2006.[53]
Political context
The exposé of the incident, coming just before Italy's general election, was a major embarrassment for the Berlusconi administration.[26] If it had admitted foreknowledge of or complicity in the operation, it would have been admitting that one part of the government (its intelligence services) deliberately undermined the efforts of another (its judiciary). If it had denied any involvement, it would point to a serious lapse in Italian security, as it would mean foreign intelligence agencies would be able to pull off major operations within Italy, right under the nose of Italy's own intelligence agencies, with virtual impunity.[14]
Either way, most observers thought it clear Silvio Berlusconi did not wish the case to proceed. He initially told the press that he did not believe the CIA was responsible for the abduction, and even if they were responsible, it was a justifiable action. He was widely quoted in the press as having said, "You can't tackle terrorism with a law book in your hand.".[26] He then declared to the ANSA agency: "This is a trial we absolutely should not have, and its result will be that our intelligence services will no longer have the cooperation of foreign intelligence".[23]
The Abu Omar case poses the problem of Italy's involvement in the US "War on Terror".[11] The incident also served to highlight tensions between Italy's fiercely independent judiciary and its executive administration (including the intelligence services), which would have preferred the judiciary did not press the issue with the United States. During the Italian investigations into the incident, it was discovered that not only had SISMI (or a division of it) collaborated with the CIA in the abduction, it had also been illegally surveiling Italian citizens, particularly Italian magistrates unfriendly to the Berlusconi administration, often with the help of Italian journalists. Italian prosecutors believed reporters from right-wing paper Libero used interviews with the lead prosecutor in the abduction case, Armando Spataro, as a pretext to glean confidential information to pass on to SISMI agents. On July 6, 2006, Libero's offices were raided by Italian police.[31]
CIA chief of base admission
In June 2009, Robert Seldon Lady, Milan CIA chief of base at the time, was quoted by Il Giornale newspaper saying "I'm not guilty. I'm only responsible for carrying out orders that I received from my superiors," He denied criminal responsibility because it was a "state matter." "I console myself by reminding myself that I was a soldier, that I was in a war against terrorism, that I couldn't discuss orders given to me." Lady's retirement villa has been seized by magistrates to cover court costs.[7]
In July 2013, Lady was arrested in Panama on an international arrest warrant.[54] The next day, he was released.[55]
Jean-Louis Bruguière was the leading French investigating magistrate in charge of counter-terrorism affairs. He was appointed in 2004 vice-president of the Paris Court of Serious Claims. He has garnered controversy for various acts, including the indictment of Rwandan president Paul Kagame for the assassination in 1994 of Juvenal Habyarimana. Washington Post journalist Dana Priest has cited him as saying that he had in the past ordered the arrest of more than 500 suspects, some with the assistance of US authorities. According to the investigative reporter, who described the workings of Alliance Base, a CTIC joint counter-terrorist operations center, involving the DGSE, the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies, Bruguière declared that "[he had] good connections with the CIA and FBI." Bruguière has since temporarily left his judicial functions to dedicate himself to politics, joining Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) conservative party. However, he was appointed by the European Union at the US Department of Treasury to oversee the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism for state-sponsored kidnapping in another jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The phrase usually refers to a United States-led program used during the War on Terror, which had the purpose of circumventing the source country's laws on interrogation, detention, extradition and/or torture. Extraordinary rendition is a type of extraterritorial abduction, but not all extraterritorial abductions include transfer to a third country.
Nicola Calipari was an Italian major general and SISMI military intelligence officer. Calipari was accidentally killed in Iraq by American soldiers while escorting a recently released Italian hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, to Baghdad International Airport.
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, is an Egyptian cleric. In 2003, he was living in Milan, Italy, from where he was kidnapped and tortured in Egypt. This "Abu Omar case" prompted a series of investigations in Italy, culminating in the criminal convictions of 22 CIA operatives, a U.S. Air Force colonel, and two Italian accomplices, as well as Nasr, himself.
A Counterterrorist Intelligence Center (CTIC) is, according to a The Washington Post November 18, 2005 front page article by Dana Priest, a counterterrorist operations center run jointly by the Central Intelligence Agency and foreign intelligence services as part of the US "War on Terror".
Rocco Martino is an Italian secret agent. He was born in Tropea, province of Catanzaro.
Marco Mancini was an Italian secret agent who was a member of the Carabinieri and the Dipartimento delle Informazioni per la Sicurezza (DIS). He was also the second-highest-ranking officer of SISMI, the military intelligence agency of Italy, until his 5 July 2006 arrest for his participation in the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. He was then indicted a second time on 13 December 2006 for his role in the SISMI-Telecom scandal.
Robert Seldon Lady is an American intelligence officer. Lady was the CIA' station chief in Milan during the Abu Omar case.
Mario Scaramella is a lawyer and security consultant. He came to international prominence in 2006 in connection with the poisoning of the ex-Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Alexander Litvinenko. As responsible for intelligence analysis and production on KGB and military GRU espionage in Europe, he served as an investigator and adviser to the Mitrokhin Commission. Scaramella was a suspect by the Italian justice department for calumny.
Nicolò Pollari is a general of the Italian Guardia di Finanza, who was the former head of Italy's national military intelligence agency, or SISMI, from 1 October 2001 until his resignation on 20 November 2006.
Colonel Joseph L. Romano III is an officer in the United States Air Force and one of 26 American nationals charged by Italian authorities with the 2003 kidnapping of Italian resident cleric Hassan Nasr as part of an alleged covert CIA operation. Romano was subsequently convicted in absentia of kidnapping. On 5 April 2013, Giorgio Napolitano, the President of the Italian Republic, pardoned Romano.
Jeffrey W. Castelli is a CIA officer who served as CIA station chief in Rome at the time of the Niger uranium forgeries. His subsequent involvement in the CIA-led kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr would lead to his subsequent sentencing to seven years in prison, by an Italian court, in 2013.
Guido Salvini is an Italian judge, based in Milan. He issued European arrest warrants in 2005 against approximatively 20 CIA agents accused of having taken part in the abduction of Abu Omar, the Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003. The case is known in Italy as the Abu Omar case. Before that, Guido Salvini was in charge of investigations, since July 1988, concerning Italy's strategy of tension during the 1970s.
The Mitrokhin Commission was an Italian parliamentary commission set up in 2002 to investigate alleged KGB ties of some Italian politicians. Set up by the Italian Parliament, then led by Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, the House of Freedoms, and presided by Paolo Guzzanti, its focus was on alleged KGB ties to opposition figures in Italian politics, basing itself on the Mitrokhin Archive, which was controversial and viewed with scepticism, and various other sources including the consultant Mario Scaramella. The Mitrokhin Commission alleged, among other things, that Romano Prodi, former centre-left Prime Minister of Italy and President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, was the "KGB's man in Italy".
On 13 May 1981, in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. The Pope was struck twice and suffered severe blood loss. Ağca was apprehended immediately and later sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court. The Pope forgave Ağca for the assassination attempt. He was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi at the Pope's request and was deported to Turkey in June 2000. Ağca converted to Roman Catholicism in 2007.
Italian intelligence agencies are the intelligence agencies of Italy. Currently, the Italian intelligence agencies are the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE), focusing on foreign intelligence, and the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna (AISI), focusing on internal security. They form part of the Department of Information for Security, which in turn is part of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The agencies have been reorganized multiple times since the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946 to attempt to increase effectiveness.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in Italian politics since the end of World War II. The CIA helped swing the 1948 general election in favor of the centrist Christian Democrats and would continue to intervene in Italian politics until at least the early 1960s.
Sabrina de Sousa is a Portuguese-American ex-CIA operative convicted of kidnapping. In 2009 she was convicted of kidnapping in Italy for her role in the 2003 abduction of the Muslim imam Abu Omar, who was kidnapped in Milan and subsequently tortured. Sousa was sentenced to four years in prison for her role in the kidnapping. A European Arrest Warrant valid throughout Europe was subsequently issued for her arrest, and she was arrested in Portugal under that arrest warrant in 2015. She was due to be extradited back to Italy to serve her sentence, having exhausted her appeal rights against her extradition in Portugal, when the President of Italy issued her a pardon ending extradition proceedings against her in February 2017. She was still due to serve community service when she left Italy for the US in October 2019 citing fears for her safety.
The Temporary Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners, widely referred to as the CIA committee, was a Committee of the European Parliament that was set up in 2006 to investigate the alleged role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the extraordinary rendition of terrorists. The chairman of the committee was Carlos Coelho.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 European Parliament, "Temporary Committee on the Alleged Use of European Countries by the CIA for the Transport and the Illegal Detention of Prisoners", Rapporteur Giovanni Claudio Fava, DT/65174EN.doc February 7, 2007, made accessible by Statewatch here , URL accessed on February 18, 2007 (in English)
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