Rendition trial ends with Milan CIA chief given eight years
• Italian court convicts Robert Lady and 23 others in absentia
• First prosecution for US abduction of suspects to torture states
The former head of the CIA in Milan has been given an eight-year jail sentence for kidnapping at the end of the first trial anywhere in the world involving the agency’s “extraordinary rendition” programme.
Robert Lady was tried in his absence and convicted of helping to organise the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street in February 2003. His superior, Jeff Castelli, the head of the CIA in Italy at the time, was acquitted on the grounds that he was covered by diplomatic immunity. Most of the other 23 alleged CIA operatives on trial were given five-year jail sentences in their absence.
Extraordinary rendition involved the abduction of suspects and their forcible transfer for interrogation to third countries, often states in which torture was routinely employed.
The judge ruled that neither the former head of Italian military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, nor his deputy could be convicted because the evidence against them was subject to official secrecy restrictions. Two other Italian intelligence officials were given three years’ jail.
Successive Italian administrations avoided applying to the US for the extradition of the 26 American defendants, who included a senior US air force officer. Their lawyers, appointed by the court, had no contact with their clients, who were regarded in Italian law as being on the run.
Eyewitnesses testified that Abu Omar was stopped, apparently by Italian police, and bundled into a van. The prosecution charged that he was driven to the US air base at Aviano near Venice, then transferred to another American military facility at Ramstein in Germany. He was allegedly flown from there to Egypt.
Four years later he was released without charge. He said he had been reduced to a “human wreck” by torture in a Cairo jail.
The prosecution alleged the Americans enjoyed co-operation from the Italian authorities. The head of the government when Abu Omar was kidnapped was Silvio Berlusconi, who returned to office as prime minister last year.
More than two years after the trial opened, the judge, Oscar Magi, heard final submissions from the prosecution and defence before retiring to consider his verdict. He told the court: “This was not an easy trial and the mere fact of its having been held is a significant event.”
The CIA has declined to comment on the case. Successive Italian governments have denied involvement in renditions.
To build their case, prosecutors ordered police to tap intelligence officers’ telephones and seize documents from intelligence service archives. Earlier this year Italy’s constitutional court dealt the prosecution a heavy blow when it ruled that much of the evidence gathered was protected by official secrecy and could not be used in court. Magi ruled that the trial should continue regardless.
In a reference to the two senior Italian intelligence officials, prosecutors told the court yesterday that the defendants included those who “by kidnapping Abu Omar compromised, rather than safeguarded, national security”.
Italian investigators had been tapping the cleric’s calls before he was abducted. Court documents leaked to the media showed he was suspected of recruiting young Muslims for the Iraqi insurgency.
The prosecution contended that his seizure not only violated Italian sovereignty but aborted an important anti-terrorist investigation.
The Guardian