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Italy Rules in Rendition Case

Source: WSJ (11-5-09)

An Italian court convicted 23 U.S. intelligence operatives on charges of kidnapping an Egyptian imam on a Milan street, prosecutors and lawyers said. The decision is a landmark ruling on the controversial U.S. practice of abducting suspected terrorists and flying them to other countries for interrogation.

Robert Seldon Lady, a former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Milan, was sentenced Wednesday in absentia to eight years in prison, according to his court-appointed lawyer Arianna Barbazza. Twenty-one other CIA operatives and an Air Force official, all tried in absentia, received five-year prison sentences, Ms. Barbazza said, adding that she planned to appeal the verdict.

The judge, Oscar Magi, issued an order for the immediate arrest of the convicted operatives, Ms. Barbazza added. A European Union arrest warrant for the 23 U.S. intelligence operatives is already outstanding.

Italy hasn't issued an extradition request for any of the Americans implicated, however, and the Italian appeals process could take several years, making it unlikely that any of the convicted operatives will actually serve time.

The case of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, is the first trial to reach a ruling related to the so-called extraordinary rendition program of the U.S., under which terrorism suspects have been ferreted out of Europe to other nations, some of which use torture.

The rendition practice was used by the CIA under President Bill Clinton and then more aggressively during the George W. Bush administration.

Posted on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | Return

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