Exposing the CIA's Italian Kidnapping Plot

Italian investigators are continuing to probe Italy's role in America's anti-terrorist war, particularly the rendition and torture of U.S.-wanted terrorist suspects. Reacting to the public and media outcry, the Italian parliament is also tracing links between Italian defense firms and the country's recently defeated government in an attempt to understand how these connections may have pushed Italy into an unpopular war.

The investigation will focus on the role played by Giovanni Castellaneta, currently Italy's ambassador to the United States, in the crafting and the delivery of the yellowcake dossier to the White House. The Italian Senate investigation seeks to detail the full extent of its intelligence agency's involvement with its American counterpart in waging an off-the-books war on international terrorism.

"Castellaneta's role is pivotal, not only because he seems to be deeply involved with the yellowcake dossier and the steering of the Marine One contract to Finmeccanica, but also because he is at the crossroad of many of Italy's activities in relation to the more general American-led war on international terrorism," states Francesco Martone, Italian senator from Sardinia for Sinistra Europea and a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission. Martone is a leading promoter of a full scope parliamentary investigation.

Recent revelations by La Repubblica, ANSA and L'espresso -- some of Italy's leading media -- support the hypothesis that the Italian agencies played a more central role in covert U.S. operations and the expansion of American military activities abroad, and that Castellaneta, on the Italian side, is the nexus for this collaboration. (See sidebar.)

For instance, Italian media have revealed that intelligence operatives close to Sismi have been involved in America's "extraordinary rendition" program. Italian agents actively participated in the Feb. 17, 2003, daylight kidnapping on a Milan street of Hussan Mustafa Omar Nasr, or Abu Omar, an Egyptian imam who had legally obtained political asylum in Italy by proving he'd be tortured if repatriated. Omar was "rendered" to Egypt -- snatched, drugged, beaten, humiliated and transmitted to Cairo via a plane leased by the CIA from the Boston Red Sox's owner. (Photos of the jet on the Cairo airport tarmac show the Red Sox team decal temporarily removed.) Omar was immediately incarcerated in an Egyptian prison where, according to Dick Marty, a Swiss congressman who recently produced a report on behalf of the Council of Europe, Omar was beaten and electrical shocks were administered to his genitals. The cell phone records of CIA agent Robert Lady, who managed the snatch in Milan, place Lady in Cairo during the initial interrogations. "It may safely be inferred," Marty's report concludes, "that [Lady] contributed, in one way or another, to the interrogation."

Although Italy's intelligence agency partnered with the CIA in the kidnapping, neither agency informed the Italian anti-terrorism police. These carabiniere thought for more than a year that Omar had fled on his own to the Balkans, a wild goose chase spurred by an urgent (fake) tip offered by the CIA. Omar resurfaced via telephone from Cairo in April 2004, when he was briefly consigned to house detention because the Egyptians decided he wasn't a threat. Once Omar alerted his wife in Italy of his fate, however, he was rearrested and placed in solitary confinement.

Italian authorities have vehemently denied any foreknowledge of, let alone participation in, the Omar kidnapping. Nonetheless the independent Italian judiciary persisted, and in late 2005, European-wide arrest warrants were issued for 22 CIA operatives whom an Italian prosecutor accused of kidnapping Abu Omar. But in April 2006, just after Berlusconi was defeated, his outgoing justice minister told the prosecutors that he would not pass their extradition request on to the United States -- a step that is usually a formality.