Italian court issues arrest warrant for CIA agents

Telegraph | News | Italian court issues arrest warrant for CIA agents: "Italian court issues arrest warrant for CIA agents
By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
(Filed: 24/12/2005)

An Italian court yesterday issued a Europe-wide arrest warrant for 22 CIA agents accused of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric from Milan and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

The move raises the stakes in the dispute between Europe and America over the CIA's controversial policy of 'extraordinary rendition'.

It means that police forces in Britain and the 24 other members of the EU would be legally obliged to arrest any of the suspects, who would be sent back to Italy under a fast-track system adopted as a counter-terrorist measure after the September 11 attacks.

The same procedure was used to return Hussain Osman, one of the alleged would-be suicide bombers in London on July 21, after he was tracked down to Italy.

The Italian prosecutor, Armando Spataro, said he had also asked Interpol to try to detain the CIA agents anywhere in the world.

Magistrates in Milan believe that a CIA team abducted Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, otherwise known as Abu Omar, off a Milan street as he made his way to a mosque in February 2003.

The wanted men include the alleged head of the CIA Milan sub-station, identified as Robert Seldon Lady, who retired to a villa in northern Italy but slipped out of the country before arrest warrants were issued in July.

Prosecutors issued the warrants in apparent frustration with the justice minister, Roberto Castelli, who appears to have been stalling on their demand that the Italian government request their extradition from America.

? The Polish government said yesterday it had decided not to make public the results of an inquiry into the possible existence of CIA prisons on Polish soil.

Although officials promised last week to reveal all the results of the investigation, a spokesman said the parliamentary commission had read the report, accepted its conclusions and now considered the matter closed."