I have been variously amused and outraged by the story of the Milan 13. Mainly, I just can’t believe how stupid they were.
But two new NYT’s articles today have added to my outrage-o-meter. From the first:
On Feb. 17, 2003, Mr. Nasr disappeared.
When the Italians began investigating, they said, they were startled to find evidence that some of the C.I.A. officers who had been helping them investigate Mr. Nasr were involved in his abduction.
“We do feel quite betrayed that this operation was carried out in our city,” a senior Italian investigator said. “We supplied them information about Abu Omar, and then they used that information against us, undermining an entire operation against his terrorist network.”
He and other senior Italian officials in Milan’s police and prosecutor’s office were angry enough to answer detailed questions about the case, but insisted on anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
“This whole investigation has been very difficult because we’ve been using the same methods we used against organized crime to trace the activities of people we considered to be our friends and colleagues,” the senior Italian investigator said. “It has been quite a troubling affair.”
:::more on the flip:::
Troubling indeed.
Italian investigators said they were surprised when they discovered that he had placed a cellphone call to one of their own police officers not long after Mr. Nasr disappeared, but made no mention of what had happened, they said. The frustration expressed by the Italians echoes similar sentiments among some counterterrorism officials in other European countries.
Yes, we are such good allies:
We are so fun to deal with:
The Italians said their anger and disappointment with the Americans did not end there. They said that when they later asked the Americans about Mr. Nasr’s whereabouts, they were told that American intelligence had discovered that he had surfaced somewhere in the Balkans.
And then there is the second article:
“There is close to no probability that the United States is going to extradite any of these people to Italy, notwithstanding the letter of any treaty,” said Peter J. Spiro, who teaches international law at the University of Georgia. “It’s very unlikely that there is going to be any sort of cooperation on this end.”
…The extradition treaty between the United States and Italy on its face would seem to apply to the crime alleged here. Extradition is required, with few exceptions, where the offense in question gives rise to punishment of more than one year in each country. The13 Americans are accused of the crime of kidnapping, which carries serious penalties in both Italy and the United States.
The treaty contains exceptions for “political and military offenses,” but neither exception fits neatly here.
…”I could imagine the United States playing games,” Professor Cassel said. “If the extradition request came in the name of the false passport, they could say, ‘We have no knowledge of such a person.'”
The Bush administration finds a new way to make me ashamed of my country EVERY SINGLE DAY.
I’m not so much surprised by the unlikely prospect of cooperation as I am by the burning of relationships with intelligence officials in other countries.
Even we liberals, despite Rovian theories, want the bad guys caught. And this fellow sounds like he’s probably one of the bad guys.
they had him on tape organizing terrorist cells throughout Europe. He was a very bad guy, and very influential.
I’m guessing that they wanted to roll up his operation before the war launched, and they figured the Egyptians could make him give up the names, locations, methods, etc. very quickly.
BUT!!! Why did the Egyptians release him (however briefly) then?
Abu Omar was kidnapped for two reasons. To get him to talk and to persuade him to become a double agent. His lengthy detention indicates that he did neither.
According to articles in the Corriere, not available on the web, Abu Omar adopted the tactic of repentance. He swore that he would cut off all relations with the outlawed Egyptian organization of which he was a member. This is a common ploy used by most political prisoners in Egypt. The most noteworthy case is that of Al Zawahiri, mentor of Ben Laden, often indicated as number two of Al Qaeda. (He is actually the founder.)
Another reason for his release was the pressure put on Egypt by the Italian investigators. The Italians had rock-hard proof that Abu Omar was detained in Egypt.
The Italian investigation began within a few days after the kidnapping with the testimony of two friends of an eye witness. The eye witness was finally persuaded to talk by the Imam of the mosque in Via Jenner.
Italian investigators were very much aggravated by the American behavior. The Italians had been keeping the Abu Omar network under surveillance for some time and had shared their information with American authorities. The kidnapping simply destroyed the Italian investigation, which may have produced far better results in the long run.
Another reason for his brief release was made in this morning’s Corriere article, an interview with the Imam of Via Jenner.
The interview advances various reasons for his temporary release. The last hypothesis is that he was released because of rivalry between the Egyptian secret police, Mukhabarat, and the state security police, Amn Al Dawla.
He was arrested again after making several telephone calls in Italy to his wife and a friend, thus violating his promise to keep silent. Naturally, both the Italians and the Egyptians were listening in.
During the call to his wife he foolishly asked his wife if authorities had confiscated his computer. She replied, no. The investigators immediately went to pick it up.
“This whole investigation has been very difficult because we’ve been using the same methods we used against organized crime to trace the activities of people we considered to be our friends and colleagues,” the senior Italian investigator said. “It has been quite a troubling affair.”
And the other European Intelligence services will be watching this closely. It’s a wonder they get any cooperation at all anymore.
I’m curious to know which section of the Italian services are involved here. I keep thinking back to how the ‘yellowcake’ forgeries supposedly surfaced through SISMI, Italy’s military intelligence service. This wouldn’t be SISMI, so i wonder if not everybody’s on the same team there.
And I had to wonder if the U.S. people were perhaps worried about the Italians following through on this case. I am TRYING to remember, but having a tough time — didn’t Italy get the terrorist who masterminded the Achille Loro cruise ship hijacking and then promptly let him go?
U.S. presses Italy to find convicted terrorist
Wikipedia has this to say: Youssef al Molqi was sentenced to 30 years, left the Rebibbia prison in Rome on February 16, 1996, on a twelve-day furlough, and fled to Spain, where he was recaptured and extradited back to Italy.
The conduct of the U.S. in this case is baffling as usual. Italian intelligence worked closely with the U.S. and Britain to build a case for war in Iraq. It is widely believed that those forged Niger yellowcake documents originated with Italian Intelligence. Berlusconi closely aligned himself with Bush despite widespread popular opposition from the Italian populace. The arrogance of Bushco just knows no bounds. Despite the fact that Rendition clearly violates international law, Bush just practices it anyway, even on the sovereign soil of his best friends. This case is only now getting media attention on this side of the pond because of the indictments, but it has been causing huge waves in Italy for months, and it was one of the main reasons for the setbacks Berlusconi suffered in the recent elections. With friends like Bush Berlusconi and Tony Blair truly need no enemies.
A couple of thoughts on this:
This comment
makes me think of the stories about Nicola Calipari. He was described as Italy’s top person in tracking Mafia cases. Now he’s dead, by American guns. And the Italians are going after American agents. Nice synchronicity, if not more than that.
And I do so appreciate these great throwaway lines
Take a moment to savor the time and reporting skill and use of contacts that went into getting that information. Chances are it didn’t just walk in off the street by its little lonesome.
Kidnapping is a crime. I dont care who it is. The CIA run around sovereign states commiting criminal acts. This should be stopped and the perpetrators extradited. We are not going to go winning “wars on terra” by commiting criminal and yes terrorist acts ourselves.
I think its time one of our brave Senators open a little investigation in the upper hizzouse… not only will it lead to a lot of media attention to this shameful act, it will also help pull on the threads to see whom else has been snatched off the streets in allied countries (we know of two so far, this one and the one in Macedonia).
Seems to me someone was re-reading the Vanunu playbook…
Pax
European arrest warrants have been issued against the 13 suspects.
Abu Omar is alive and was able to meet his relatives in Cairo prison.
The American Embassy in Rome is suspected of being involved in the abduction of Abu Omar. Some of the cell phones have been traced to embassy personnel.
The Prime Minister of Egypt, Ahmed Nazif, has admitted in an interview with NBC that Egypt has received 60 to 70 rendition victims.
Hey c’mon people, how does anyone know, that this guy was not working for the yank in the first instance ?
The silly Italians let the cat out of the bag, by telling them how close they were getting to arresting him, then all of a sudden, he disappears ????? DUH !
Golly, that is so hard to work out.
Any further information being released purported to be emanating from this individual, has to treated with extreme caution, how can anyone be sure this individual is in fact not working for the Americans ?
There has already been unexplained mysterious explosions in various cities which have been alleged to be initiated by so called terrorists.
Not too long ago, a CIA agent was caught manufacturing a bomb in his hotel room when it went off prematurely, and injured him as a result.
Said agent was spirited out of the country like greased lightening, and the media developed Alzhemiers over night.
No one, had the balls to ask,
“WHAT IS A CIA AGENT DOING ASSEMBLING BOMBS IN A FRIENDLY COUNTRIES HOTLE ROOM ????? “.
Find the answer to that, and you’ll find the answer to most of the terrorism problem that appears to be plaguing the World these days.
The interesting thing is that this is not a new story. It took the 13 indictments for the U.S. media to pick up on it, but here is a piece that ran in the London Times in March:
Missing Imam’s Trail Said to Lead From Italy to CIA
Prosecutors in Milan are investigating whether an Egyptian-born suspected militant was spirited away by the U.S. using a disputed tactic.
By Tracy Wilkinson and Bob Drogin
Times Staff Writers
March 3, 2005
ROME — When Hassan Osama Nasr, a controversial Egyptian-born imam, vanished from the streets of Milan two years ago, his friends and family insisted he’d been kidnapped by American agents. Few people listened. But today it appears Italian judicial authorities may agree with them.
A leading prosecutor in Milan has opened an investigation into the February 2003 disappearance, which has the hallmarks of a so-called extraordinary rendition, in which American counter-terrorism agents seize and transport suspects to third countries without seeking court permission.
The right-wing administration of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has not commented on the case, although it seems unlikely that the U.S. would conduct an extraordinary rendition without at least the tacit approval of the Italian government.
The case has outraged Italian opposition politicians, who want to know whether their government is involved in what one called “the outsourcing of torture.” Nasr reportedly resurfaced 15 months later in Egypt and said he had been kidnapped by American and Italian agents and taken to Egypt, where he was tortured. His current whereabouts are unclear.
Extraordinary renditions have apparently been used increasingly since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. U.S. agents reportedly grab suspects in one country and then transfer them to another country to be interrogated, sometimes with tactics not allowed on American soil, such as torture.
Most suspects are said to have been nabbed in countries such as Pakistan where the rule of law is tenuous and the actions are easier to conceal. It is extremely rare for an official in a country where a seizure takes place to launch an investigation, as the Italian prosecutor has done.
Nasr, widely known as Abu Omar, was a suspected militant affiliated with a mosque in Milan that U.S. and Italian investigators have long contended was a hotbed of Islamic extremism.
On the Trail
Last week, Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro went to the joint U.S.-Italian Aviano Air Base to demand records on vehicular and airplane traffic in and out of the base, officials familiar with the investigation said. Reports suggest that after Abu Omar was seized, he was bundled off to the air base, then flown to Egypt.
Spataro declined to discuss details of the case and would only say that an inquiry was underway that had led investigators to the base. “I can confirm only that I was in Aviano,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Italy confirmed that Spataro had visited the base and had submitted questions to Italian military officers there, who relayed the queries to American officials, following the prescribed protocol.
“We are responding appropriately, in accordance with our [U.S.-Italian] agreements,” the spokesman, Benedict Duffy, said.
A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment on the case. But intelligence officials are watching the investigation closely in the event that Spataro threatens to expose clandestine American agents or operations in Italy.
A former senior CIA operations officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the agency’s “routine and practice” was to notify another government before U.S. agents snatched someone off their soil. He said he could not discuss the Abu Omar case because the details were classified.
Simona Howe, a spokeswoman for the Italian Embassy in Washington, said the embassy was aware of the investigation, but had no instructions to discuss it with U.S. officials.
‘Not a Banana Republic’
Prime Minister Berlusconi is one of President Bush’s most loyal allies, and Italy was one of the strongest Western European supporters of the war in Iraq, sending troops there despite widespread popular sentiment against it.
But Italy’s judiciary is often at odds with the Berlusconi government. He has frequently criticized judges for what he considers their leftist tendencies, especially when they challenge the prime minister’s policies.
Spataro and other prosecutors in Milan are known as crusaders who have tackled numerous terrorism cases and broken up several cells believed to have had ties to Al Qaeda militants and other networks in Europe.
News of Spataro’s investigation into the Abu Omar case first broke in Italian newspapers, and prompted a protest last week in the Italian parliament by opposition politicians who demanded to know what the government knew about the operation.
Several said that if the reports of a kidnapping on the streets of Milan proved true, the incident would represent a serious breach of international law. “We are not a banana republic,” said Marco Minniti of the Democrats of the Left Party.
“I want to know if Italy is involved in the outsourcing of torture,” said Sen. Tana de Zulueta.
Italian media have cited a witness who says that on Feb. 17, 2003, Abu Omar was walking to Viale Jenner Mosque in Milan when a group of men surrounded him, bundled him into a minivan and sped away.
The busy mosque, a converted garage on a main street, was once labeled by U.S. officials as the principal Al Qaeda logistics center in Europe. To this day, it is under heavy police surveillance and its members — primarily Middle Easterners and North Africans — are considered hostile to outsiders.
Clues in Disappearance
At the time, Italian authorities suspected Abu Omar of helping to build a terrorist network in Europe, of recruiting jihadist volunteers for Iraq and of possibly plotting a bombing. Prosecutors were seeking evidence to indict him when he vanished.
A U.S. counter-terrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday that Abu Omar was “considered a veteran jihadist” who had fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan. After Omar arrived in Italy in 2001, the official said, “he supported other jihadists” by providing training, and “is suspected of involvement in planning terrorist activities.”
Fifteen months after disappearing in 2003, Abu Omar, who said he had been released by Egyptian authorities, telephoned his wife and friends in Milan and told them what had happened, Italian newspapers reported, citing prosecutors’ wiretaps of the conversations. He said he had been blindfolded, driven to a military base, then flown to Egypt, where he was tortured. He was taken back into custody by Egyptian authorities shortly after the release, the reports said.
Italian newspapers say that up to 15 men, at least some of them CIA agents, are implicated in the alleged kidnapping. Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, reported that the prosecution was focusing on Aviano Air Base after cellphone records showed that one of the suspected captors, allegedly en route with Abu Omar, called the facility.
A U.S. official familiar with Spataro’s inquiry said the prosecutor had asked for records of vehicular and airplane traffic in and out of the base. That presumably would allow him to track the alleged transport of Abu Omar to the base and then his flight onward.
The Aviano base is a main component of the United States’ North Atlantic Treaty Organization operations in Europe. It is run jointly by the U.S. and Italian air forces and has an estimated 4,200 troops and 1,000 U.S. and Italian civilians.
The CIA has covertly delivered at least 18 terrorism suspects since 1998 to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other Middle Eastern nations where prisoners are often tortured, according to news accounts, congressional testimony and independent investigations.
The program intensified after the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials say the CIA’s role has varied, from providing electronic and other covert surveillance before raids to flying blindfolded suspects from one country to another on a Gulfstream jet it uses.
CIA Says It Seeks Assurances
U.S. intelligence officials defend the practice.
Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA analyst, said each of the renditions that he supervised was approved by lawyers and policy review teams at the agency, at the National Security Council and, in some cases, at the Justice Department.
“Each one had to be built almost as if it’s a court case in the United States,” said Scheuer, who from January 1996 to July 1999 ran the agency’s clandestine unit searching for Osama bin Laden.
“I always assumed if I had 15 lawyers’ signatures, it was probably fine.”
Scheuer said the CIA was required to get an oral or written statement from the country where the suspect was to be taken saying that “they will abide by the strictures of their law.”
A CIA spokeswoman said that policy remained in place and that the agency sought “assurances from foreign governments that individuals would not be mistreated.”
Although Scheuer said he was not familiar with the Abu Omar case, he said that in his experience, the CIA never snatched a suspect from a foreign country without notifying or seeking approval from the local government.
“The agency just wouldn’t do something like that under the nose of the Europeans, especially in Italy,” he said.
“The Italians are among the best in terms of cooperation on terrorism.”
German police and prosecutors are separately investigating allegations by Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who was born in Lebanon.
Masri has told authorities that he was kidnapped in Macedonia in December 2003 and was later flown to a U.S. prison in Afghanistan. He said he was held for five months before he was released without charges.
More recently, U.S. authorities released Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen born in Egypt who was held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Habib said he was captured in Pakistan in October 2001, flown to Egypt by U.S. operatives and tortured there for six months before being taken to Cuba.
“The horror story of the post-9/11 world is that any foreign national anywhere in the world can be plucked from the streets of anywhere, whisked off to another country, never be heard from again and be utterly beyond the reach of the law,” Joseph Margulies, a Chicago-based lawyer who represented Habib, said Wednesday.
In his first extensive testimony on the subject, CIA Director Porter J. Goss strongly defended the agency’s role in delivering suspects to other countries when he appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 16.
“As you know, many nations will claim their citizens back,” said Goss, who was confirmed in September.
“And we have responsibility of trying to ensure that they are properly treated, and we try and do the best we can to guarantee that. But of course once they’re out of our control, there’s only so much we can do. But we do have an accountability program for those situations.”
Wilkinson reported from Rome and Drogin from Washington.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-vanished3mar03.story
Correction. This ran in The LA Times, not the London Times. It is the only MSM coverage on this case before this week that I am aware of. The url is no longer active.