Skip to main content

Home/ International Politics of the Middle East/ Group items tagged Egyptian imam

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Erin Gold

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Italy convicts CIA rendition agents - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...2009114164237350216.html

CIA torture rendtion Egyptian imam

shared by Erin Gold on 04 Nov 09 - Cached
  • An Italian judge has convicted 23 US secret agents over the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam from a Milan street in an extraordinary rendition by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
  • trial was the first in the world to centre on the agency's controversial programme, in which "terror" suspects are thought to have been transferred to countries known to practise torture.
  • case concerned the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, and his transfer to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • All of the Americans were tried in absentia, with 22 sentenced to five years in jail and Robert Seldon Lady, the Milan CIA station chief, handed eight years in prison.
  • Citing diplomatic immunity, Judge Oscar Magi told the Milan courtroom on Wednesday that he was acquitting three other Americans.
  • Magi said the men were protected by by state secrecy rules
  • CIA has not commented on any of the allegations surrounding Abu Omar".
  • Some of them [those convicted], including Seldon Lady and Jeff Castelli, the CIA chief of station in Rome, left the country when they were found to be part of the operation and they never came back to Italy. "It is very unlikely they will come now that they have been convicted
  • even if the verdict is upheld, it seems unlikely they will be extradited."
  • Abu Omar, an imam granted political asylum in Italy, was taken from a Milan street on February 17, 2003, in an operation allegedly co-ordinated by the CIA and  SISMI.
  • He was released after four years in prison without being charged
  • Abu Omar told Human Rights Watch in 2007 that he was "hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks" during his time in Egypt. "I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too," he told the organisation.
1 - 1 of 1
Showing 20▼ items per page