Marco Mancini (born 3 October 1960) 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, [1] until his 5 July 2006 arrest for his participation in the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (the Imam Rapito case). [2] He was then indicted a second time on 13 December 2006 for his role in the SISMI-Telecom scandal. [3] [4]
Born in Castel San Pietro Terme, Mancini led the anti-terrorist division of the Italian secret service. [5] Mancini was arrested alongside his superior, General Gustavo Pignero , on 5 July 2006. The investigations directed by Milan's public prosecutor Armando Spataro demonstrated that Mancini proposed himself to the CIA as a double agent. [6] According to Colonel Stefano D'Ambrosio's testimony to the Italian justice, the CIA refused because they considered him too "venal". His demand "left traces in the computer" of the U.S. intelligence. [6]
All SISMI testimonies concurred in saying that Mancini owed his dazzling career (he was a non-commissioned officer) to his "privileged relations with the CIA". [6] According to SISMI testimony, after the 17 February 2003 kidnapping of the Hassan Mustafa Nasr, then CIA director George Tenet sent a letter to SISMI General Nicolò Pollari in August 2003, to which he would owe, according to SISMI testimony, the real reasons of his promotion. On 12 February 2013, he was sentenced to a 9-year jail term by the Milano Court of Appeals. [7]
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI, which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis. On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq violated United Nations sanctions against Iraq by attempting to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating weapons of mass destruction.
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 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 "Imam rapito affair" 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.
Robert Seldon Lady is a United States agent convicted of kidnapping in Italy for his role in the CIA's abduction of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in February 2003, while Lady was CIA station chief in Milan.
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.
The SISMI-Telecom scandal, uncovered in Italy in 2006, refers to a surveillance scandal believed to have begun in 1996, under which more than 5,000 persons' phones were tapped.
The Abu Omar Case was the abduction and transfer to Egypt of the Imam of Milan Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. The case was picked by the international media as one of the better-documented cases of extraordinary rendition carried out in a joint operation by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI) in the context of the global war on terrorism declared by the George W. Bush administration.
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 Imam Rapito affair. 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.