Italy indicts 31 linked to CIA rendition case
The Associated Press
Published: February 15, 2007
MILAN, Italy: Italy will hold the first criminal trial over the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program after a judge on Friday indicted 26 Americans and five Italians for the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, while U.S. allies elsewhere in Europe are tightening the noose on such actions.
The Milan trial is set for June 8, although the Americans, who have all left the country, almost certainly will not be returned to Italy.
Prosecutors allege that five Italian intelligence officials worked with the Americans — all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents — to abduct terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.
Nasr was allegedly transferred by vehicle to the Aviano Air Base near Venice and then flown to the Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany and onward to Egypt, where he was held for four years and, according to his lawyer, tortured. He was freed earlier this week by an Egyptian court that ruled his detention was “unfounded.”