ITALY'S CIA TRIAL EXPOSES SECRET WAR

Italy’s decision to try 26 CIA operatives in absentia, as well as five of its own top spies for their roles in the Bush administration’s secret “renditions policy” exposes a serious gulf between the way America and its allies believe the war against terrorism should be conducted. It also highlights the fact that the European public is well informed about the US-led kidnapping of terror suspects whereas Americans appear to know little about the issue because it is rarely highlighted by the US media or placed on the political agenda by members of Congress.
Effectively, the Bush administration has succeeded in convincing the media and Congress that any scrutiny of its abductions strategy and secret CIA prisons overseas would be unpatriotic and counterproductive to the overall war on terror and to the CIA’s clandestine activities. In Europe there is no such reluctance to address the issue. The media and the courts in several countries have not only exposed the policy of kidnappings by the CIA but the fact that suspects are sent for interrogation to countries that the State Department lists as routinely using torture. Some suspects are also held in secret CIA prisons in countries like Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria. In Germany too, warrants have been issued for 13 CIA agents accused of abducting a German citizen and transporting him to a secret facility in Afghanistan where he was tortured.
The Italian trial, however, is likely to be the most explosive one. It began on June 6, three days before President Bush was due to tour Europe and provided an embarrassing backdrop to his visit. Since then the trial has been adjourned to allow the court to hear arguments from the prime minister’s office that investigators working for the prosecutor’s office overstepped the law when they bugged the phones of Italian spies working for the country’s foreign intelligence agency.
The Milan case revolves around the kidnapping of a Muslim imam, Hasan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, as he walked to Milan’s largest mosque on the afternoon of February 17, 2003. He was dragged into a van by strange men and vanished. The involvement of the CIA and SISMI, Italy’s foreign intelligence service in his abduction might never have come to light but for the fact that officers from Digos, Italy’s internal security service were independently tracking Omar. They suspected him of raising funds for an organization whose aim was to overthrow the Egyptian government. The moment he vanished, Digos operatives wanted to know what had happened to him and were told by the CIA he had left Italy to link up with terrorists in the Balkans. By then of course, the CIA had already flown him from an airbase at Aviano on an unregistered flight to Egypt where they knew he would probably be tortured.
The matter might have ended at that point but for the fact that a year later Digos operatives in Milan discovered they had been conned. They discovered that CIA agents in Milan and Rome, as well as senior figures in SISMI, had lied to them about the circumstances surrounding the Muslim cleric’s disappearance. Digos quickly referred the matter to Milan’s judiciary and in particular to Armando Spataro, a savvy, no nonsense prosecutor. The moment he opened a file on the case Digos agents were only too happy to unearth information about the CIA and SISMI, the two organizations they believed betrayed them.
It did not take Digos staff long to discover that the CIA had been sloppy in its planning of the kidnapping. For example, its operatives in Milan ran up a bill of $160,000 in a glitzy hotel and used cell phones to communicate with each other and with bosses at CIA HQ in Langley, VA. The head of the CIA in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, even left a surveillance photo of Abu Omar in an apartment he vacated. All in all the CIA left behind so many clues of its role in the Omar abduction that it was a slam dunk case. The more difficult issue for Prosecutor Spataro was proving the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi had given SISMI a green light to be a part of the CIA’s rendition’s policy. With great relish, Digos went after the SISMI element in the rendition of Omar and uncovered a SISMI listening post in the center of Rome that had been spying on journalists and anyone opposed to the Berlusconi regime.
Prosecutor Spataro was particularly disturbed when one of his investigators helping with surveillance of top SISMI figures apparently threw himself off a motorway over-pass to his death. However, Spataro managed to strike a deal with a SISMI agent in return for a reduced prison sentence. The agent agreed to testify that the abduction of Omar was government approved and that after 9/11 a decision was taken that SISMI could aid the CIA in its renditions policy. A policeman involved in the abduction also took a plea deal as did a former reporter. Spataro has so far charged five SISMI agents including its former chief and his deputy with involvement in the kidnapping.
As for Omar, he remains in Egypt, claiming through lawyers he was tortured there. The Egyptian government has withdrawn his passport, preventing him from giving evidence in Milan. After he was abducted in February 2003 he was held in an interrogation center for close to a month and released. He immediately phoned his wife and relatives in Milan and that angered the Egyptian authorities who returned him to prison. He was not released again until February 11, 2006, five days before Milan's Prosecutor Spataro told the international media he was going to seek the extradition of CIA officers. It is believed the CIA abducted Omar as a quid pro quo for the involvement of Egypt in the interrogation of suspects abducted by CIA agents across the globe. The Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak had long wanted Omar in its clutches. Had his abduction not become an international issue some observers believe he would vanished into the Egyptian prison system in which torture and disappearances are common occurrences.
On June 9, 2007, with the Milan trial under way, Prosecutor Spataro told the media that his aim was to demonstrate that western democracies could wage a war on terror using existing laws and by showing respect for those laws.
“We want the punishment of terrorists but in our courtrooms. And we don’t need to give our enemies a justification for recruiting terrorists,” he added.
The Milan case is a spectacle that has drawn wide international scrutiny, with the exception of the United States and its media outlets that have shown little interest in the matter. Meanwhile, even with the refusal of the US to extradite those CIA agents named in the Italian indictment, Spataro has moved on with his case. The Milan courtroom where the trial is being held has cages reserved for the accused CIA agents but those cages will undoubtedly remain empty throughout the proceedings. Somewhat bizarrely, the court atmosphere otherwise seems normal with the five Italian spies in the dock. But, to add to the strange character of the event, the CIA accused are represented in court by lawyers who claim they have never spoken to their clients. The previous Berlusconi government never formally asked for the extradition of the CIA operatives and it thought unlikely the new administration of Romano Prodi wants a confrontation with the White House by making such a request. Still the trial will go ahead and it is likely when the German case gets underway later this year jurists and the public in Munich will witness a similar image of an empty dock reserved for alleged CIA kidnappers.
The renditions issue and the scandal of secret prisons in Rumanian and Poland will not go away because there are other ongoing investigations into the CIA’s activities in Europe. Some are being handled within the European parliament but others could end up in the courts in countries like Sweden. To date, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has not been involved but some experts believe it is only a matter of time before it is dragged into the controversy.
The European Parliament’s Swiss investigator, Dick Marti, continues to build a dossier on CIA secret prisons and an extensive log of CIA rendition flights in and out of European airports. He has been able to link the movement of CIA jets between Poland and Rumania, as well as destinations such as Afghanistan, Morocco, Egypt, Dubai, Jordan and Morocco. He has also uncovered information showing that the CIA, despite denials by the US, Polish and Rumanian governments ran secret prisons in Poland and Rumania between 2003 and 2005.