Italian CIA Kidnap/Rendition trial

[David WJ Sherlock]

Trials begin to day of 26 CIA agents and 6 Italians accused of kidnapping a Muslim Cleric accused of supplying Iraq insurgents.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6732897.stm

Bush admits to secret prisons:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5321606.stm

Plus: Revelations by BBC News 24 that The Associated Press in Paris have reported CIA secret prisons uncovered in Romania and Poland.

[karlos]

It is really amazing that the americans can come to europe and nab anyone whoever they like especially Muslim religious leaders and then torture them, hold them for years,
No CIA officer will ever come to court for this nor will the americans ever accept Italian juristiction.

Imagine if this was Hitler's germany and he was sending his SS into other countries and grabbing their citizens.

America today is the same as Nazi germany.

[David WJ Sherlock]

[TonyGosling]

Rendition is big news today and it appears spawners of Gladio and all things evil, NATO, are at the helm AGAIN.
http://news.google.co.uk/news?ncl=1116873012
Here's one of the better articles...............

EU states did run secret CIA jails, new report says
08.06.2007 - 09:22 CET | By Helena Spongenberg
http://euobserver.com/13/24227

Polish and Romanian security officials have confirmed to Europe's human rights watchdog that the two countries hosted secret and illegal CIA prisons, while the watchdog also says that EU member states were aware of CIA kidnappings and rendition flights, UK daily the Guardian has reported.

In a new report by the Council of Europe – set to be published on Friday (8 June) if adopted by the council delegates – senior Polish and Romanian security officials have confirmed, despite official denials by their governments, that their countries used to hold in secret some US prisoners captured after the September 11 attacks in New York in 2001.

There is "now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA [existed] in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania," the report concludes.

The author of the report - Swiss MP Dick Marty - also found that NATO signed a deal with the US within weeks of the 9/11 attacks allowing civilian jets used by the US intelligence service during its so-called extraordinary rendition programme to move across member states' airspace.

"We have sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA's illegal activities on their territories," he states in the report and goes on to say that the agreement may have been illegal, according to the European Convention on Human Rights underpinning the 46-member council.

EU sanctions
It is Mr Marty's second report on the CIA rendition programme in Europe, which allegedly took place between the end of 2001 until 2005, although one of the notorious CIA planes has been spotted refilling gas in Norway and Iceland in January this year.

"My first report focused mainly on illegal inter-state transfers and extraordinary renditions. This second report will focus mainly on the other part of my mandate – secret detentions," he said in a statement on the council website ahead of the release of the report.

The first report – published exactly a year ago – found that several European countries acted as stepping stones in the CIA practice of abducting and transporting terrorist suspects to secret detention centres.

Rendition missions were launched from airports in Germany, Spain, Turkey and Azerbaijan, while airports in Ireland, Italy, Greece and the Czech Republic were used for re-fuelling, the report adds.

Abductions were said to have taken place in Sweden, Macedonia, Italy and in Bosnia, where detainees were either dropped off or transferred further to Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan, Romania, Uzbekistan and Poland, among other countries.

Justice commissioner Franco Frattini indicated in 2005 that EU member states hosting secret CIA jails could face sanctions if the allegations were found to be true, saying that member states risk "serious consequences, including the suspension of the right to vote in the council [the EU member states decision-making body]."

All EU member states are also member of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe.

US president George Bush admitted in September last year that his country's intelligence service runs secret prisons for terrorist suspects, but he refused to say where they were located.

CIA on trial in Italy
In the meantime, the first criminal trial over the CIA's extraordinary rendition program is set to open in Italy also on Friday.

Twenty-six US citizens and six Italians – most of them believed to be CIA or Italian agents - are accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.

The North Americans will be tried in absentia and Italy has not yet announced whether it will seek their extradition to the Milan trial

[TonyGosling]

Italian court finds CIA agents guilty of kidnapping terrorism suspect• • First prosecution for US abduction of suspects to torture states

Twenty-three Americans were tonight convicted of kidnapping by an Italian court at the end of the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme for abducting terrorist suspects.

The former head of the CIA in Milan Robert Lady was given an eight-year jail sentence for his part in the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who claimed that he was subsequently tortured in Egypt. Lady's superior, Jeff Castelli, the then head of the CIA in Italy, and two other Americans were acquitted on the grounds that they enjoyed diplomatic immunity.

But another 21 alleged CIA operatives and a US air force officer were each sentenced to five years in jail. All were tried in absentia and those who were convicted will be regarded as fugitives under Italian law.

Extraordinary rendition, which has been criticised as "torture by proxy', involves the snatching of suspects and their forcible transfer for interrogation to third countries – often those states where torture is routinely employed.

The judge ruled that neither the former head of Italy's military intelligence service Nicolo Pollari nor his deputy could be convicted because the evidence against them was subject to official secrecy restrictions. But two other Italian intelligence officials were each given three-year prison terms.

Successive Italian governments refused or ignored prosecutors' extradition requests to the US for the 26 Americans. All the defendants, apart from two, had lawyers appointed by the court who had no contact with their clients.

Estimates put the number of suspects subjected to extraordinary renditions at just over 100 to thousands. A European parliament-approved report in 2007 concluded that the CIA had operated more than 1,000 rendition flights over Europe alone in the previous six years. The practice was first authorised in 1986 by the then US president, Ronald Reagan, and developed in the 1990s under the Clinton administration as a way of tackling Islamism. Its use is thought to have been extended after George Bush Jr declared his "war on terror" following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Some suspects are alleged to have been transferred to "black sites", secret prisons operated by the CIA outside US legal jurisdiction.

According to testimony of witnesses, Omar was bundled into a van after being stopped, apparently by Italian police, on a Milan street in February 2003. The prosecution said that he was driven to the US airbase at Aviano, near Venice, and then transferred to another American military facility, at Ramstein in Germany. He was allegedly flown from there to Egypt.

Four years later he was released without charge. He said he had been reduced to a "human wreck" by torture he had undergone in a Cairo jail.

The prosecution alleged that the Americans enjoyed co-operation from the Italian authorities. The head of the government when Omar was kidnapped was Silvio Berlusconi, who was voted back into office last year.

More than two years after the trial opened, the judge, Oscar Magi, heard final submissions from the prosecution and defence before retiring to consider his verdict. He told the court: "This was not an easy trial and the mere fact of its having been held is a significant event."

The CIA has declined to comment on the case. Successive Italian governments have denied involvement.

To build their case, the prosecutors ordered police to tap operatives' telephones and seize documents from intelligence service archives. Earlier this year, Italy's constitutional court dealt the prosecution a heavy blow when it ruled that much of the evidence it had gathered was protected by under Italy's official secrecy laws and could not therefore be used in court. Magi ruled that the trial should continue regardless.

In a reference to the two senior Italian intelligence officials, the lead prosecutor, Armando Spataro, told the court today that the defendants included those who "by kidnapping Abu Omar compromised, rather than safeguarded, national security".

Before he was abducted Italian investigators had been tapping the Muslim cleric's phone calls over alleged links with Islamists. The prosecution contended that his seizure not only violated Italian sovereignty but also aborted an important anti-terrorist investigation.

The judge awarded him €1m (£900,000) and his wife €500,000 in damages.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/04/cia-guilty-rendition-abu-o mar

[TonyGosling]

CIA in Italy expert Webster Tarpley comments
Nearly two dozen CIA agents have been convicted for their alleged involvement in the kidnapping and rendition of Muslim cleric Abu Omar. He was allegedly kidnapped on a Milan street in 2003 and sent to an Egyptian "black site" with the approval of the CIA and the Italian intelligence service. Though the CIA agents may not have to serve any prison time, the ruling could set a precedent that no government is above basic human rights.

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1K4_ets15A

[TonyGosling]

Not just Italy
Seems Blackwater have been working with the CIA in Germany!
http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=9433

[TonyGosling]

Ex-CIA Agent Convicted in Rendition Case to be extradited to Italy by Order of Portuguese Court
http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/ex-cia-agent-convicted-in-rendi tion-case-to-be-extradited-to-italy-by-order-of-portuguese-court-16011 7?news=858123

Sunday, January 17, 2016 By Shrikesh Laxmidas

LISBON (Reuters) - A Portuguese court has decided to extradite an ex-CIA agent to Italy, where she has been convicted of involvement in the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric under the U.S. "extraordinary rendition" program, legal papers showed on Friday.

Sabrina De Sousa, a joint U.S.-Portuguese citizen, was one of 26 people convicted in absentia on charges of snatching Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from a street in Milan in 2003 and taking him to be questioned in Egypt.

The case focused attention at the time on the treatment of suspects moved around the world for interrogation in the wake of the Sep. 11 2001 attacks and strained relations between Washington and Rome.

De Sousa's lawyer told Reuters on Friday there were no grounds for extradition and he would appeal to Portugal's top court.

De Sousa was arrested in Portugal in October at the request of Italian prosecutors, who want her to serve a six-year sentence.

The regional court of Lisbon ordered on Tuesday that De Sousa "be handed over to Italian authorities so that she can be notified of the initial decision," according to a copy of the court decision sent to Reuters on Friday.

"We have not been notified of the decision yet," her lawyer Manuel Magalhaes e Silva told Reuters. "But when we are notified, which might be on Monday, we will appeal it at the supreme court."

"Sabrina was not notified of the (Italian) sentence, she was tried in absentia and was not notified of the verdict and sentence," he added.

The Portuguese court said De Sousa would only be sent to Italy to be informed of her sentence and would then return to Portugal to serve it.