Italian officer cites role in kidnap
Said to tell of action by CIA

By Tom Hundley, Chicago Tribune  |  May 11, 2006

LONDON -- An Italian police officer whose job was to coordinate with the CIA has
admitted to Italian prosecutors that he was directly involved in the CIA
kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a radical Muslim preacher who was
snatched off a Milan street three years ago.

The admission by the officer, a member of an elite Carabinieri unit, is a
significant development in the case -- a firsthand account by a participant in
the abduction that implies the Italian government had some knowledge of the CIA
operation.

''We now have evidence of one Carabinieri from the anti-terrorism unit in
Milan," said a source close to the Milan prosecutor's office. ''We are
investigating if he had other accomplices."

The CIA has refused to discuss the Milan ''rendition," the agency's term for the
practice of forcibly transporting terrorism suspects to third countries for
interrogation, or even to acknowledge its role in the operation, despite
hundreds of pages of evidence compiled by Italian investigators.

Armando Spataro, Milan's chief antiterrorism prosecutor, has issued warrants for
the arrest of 22 CIA operatives, including Robert Seldon Lady, the agency's
former station chief in Milan.

What is publicly known of the case is based largely on an electronic and paper
trail of cellphone calls, hotel bills, and credit card records that trace the
rendition of Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from Milan to US military bases in
Italy and Germany and on to Egypt, where he says he was tortured and where he
remains imprisoned.

When the story broke, the government of then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
protested that its sovereignty had been breached.

US officials hinted that such operations are rarely undertaken without the
knowledge of the host government. But Carlo Giovanardi, Berlusconi's minister
for parliamentary relations, insisted ''no operation at all of this kind was
authorized."