[Vision2020] Italy Indicts 26 Americans for Kidnapping

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Italy Indicts C.I.A. Operatives in ’03 Abduction
By IAN FISHER, NY Times

ROME, Feb. 16 —An Italian judge indicted 26 Americans on Friday, most of them C.I.A. officers, in what will become the first trial of the American program of secretly whisking away terror suspects. Italy’s former top spy was also indicted.

Despite the indictment, issued by a judge in Milan, it is unlikely that any of the Americans, one of whom is an Air Force colonel, will ever face trial here. The trial is expected to take place in June.

The indictments came in connection with the case of a radical Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, disappeared near his mosque in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, and said he was kidnapped.

He was freed this week from jail in Egypt, where he says he was taken and tortured.

The indictment marked a turning point in Europe, where anger is high at the American program of “extraordinary renditions,” an aggressive policy of seizing suspected terrorists on foreign soil and interrogating them at secret locations in a third country.