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MILAN – An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorist suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA’s extraordinary-rendition program.
Human rights groups hailed the decision and pressed President Obama to repudiate the Bush administration’s practice of abducting terrorist suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture is permitted.
The Obama administration ended the CIA’s interrogation program and shuttered its secret overseas jails in January but has opted to continue extraordinary renditions.
The Americans, who were tried in absentia, now cannot travel to Europe without risking arrest as long as the verdicts remain in place.
The Americans and Italian agents were accused of abducting Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany. He was then moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He has since been released but has not been permitted to leave Egypt to attend the trial.
Nasr was suspected of organizing the movement of would-be suicide bombers to the Mideast, and Prosecutor Armando Spataro noted in his closing arguments that the timing of his CIA-led abduction, as the United States was preparing to invade Iraq, indicated his potential importance.
Spataro had sought stiffer sentences ranging from 10 to 13 years in jail, citing a conspiracy between U.S. and Italian secret services to abduct Nasr, who was under surveillance by Italian investigators building their own terror case against him.
The Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents, were tried in absentia as subsequent Italian governments refused or ignored prosecutors’ extradition request – a position that casts doubts on the Italian government’s political will to enforce the sentences.
Spataro said he is considering asking Rome to issue international arrest warrants for the fugitive Americans on the strength of the convictions. The government of Silvio Berlusconi, a close ally of President George W. Bush, has previously refused.
