Just handed down by a court in Milan, Italy were convictions for the 2003 extraordinary rendition kidnapping of Imam Abu Omar, also known as Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, off the streets of Milan.
From the BBC:
The CIA's Milan station chief at the time, Robert [Seldon] Lady, was given an eight-year term, while the other 22 Americans convicted were sentenced to five years in prison.
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Judge Oscar Magi said the CIA chief for Italy [based in Rome], Jeffrey Castelli, was protected by state secrecy laws, as were the former head of Italy's military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari, and his deputy, Marco Mancini.
This is obviously a big deal, as they are the first convictions of Americans for torture and kidnapping under the auspices of the 'War on Terror' although I doubt that our government will be following through on extraditing these agents to serve out their sentences in Italy.
What may have been glossed over is the fact that Lady admitted in an interview to Il Giornale earlier this year that he was merely 'following orders' when he helped to orchestrate the kidnapping.
"I'm not guilty. I'm only responsible for carrying out orders that I received from my superiors," Lady, the CIA's Milan station chief at the time, was quoted as telling Il Giornale newspaper when asked whether he participated in the abduction.
He said he committed no crime because it was a "state matter." "I console myself by reminding myself that I was a soldier, that I was in a war against terrorism, that I couldn't discuss orders given to me."
Lady, now retired, spoke from an undisclosed location over the Internet to the paper, which is owned by the brother of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
He said an Italian police officer, who already confessed to police and was given a suspended sentence, was the only Italian at the scene of the Milan abduction.
"I wasn't at the scene and I didn't organize the thing, the rendition, the arrest, the kidnapping, however we want to call it," said Lady, who is being tried in absentia. "But my belief is that at that moment there weren't other Italians."
The very big elephant and $64,000,000 question right now is who ordered the kidnapping? We've apparently known this for a while:
But Lady’s superiors had something else
in mind. His immediate boss, Jeff Castelli,
pushed to move ahead with the operation—
going against the direct recommendation
of not only Lady but also the Counterterror-
ist Center, the CIA division tasked with ex-
traordinary rendition. Ultimately, Castelli’s
plan was approved by the brass at Langley
and SISMI, the CIA’s Italian counterpart.
According to a senior CIA officer directly
involved, the week before the rendition,
CIA director George Tenet met national-
security adviser Condoleezza Rice in the
West Wing, where Rice approved the mis-
sion and fretted over how she was going to
tell President Bush.
Lady takes the fall, loosely speaking, from an undisclosed location, for an operation that Castelli, who received diplomatic immunity in the incident, planned out from the Counterterrorist Center with the the approval of higher-ups, including George Tenet, Condoleeza Rice. Lady says he was merely 'following orders' the entire time. Condi 'fretted' over having to tell Dubya, who obviously didn't do anything to stop the operation.
Still more questions than answers here, but the tangled web of this affair seems to intersect often with the players and the timeline of the Yellowcake Forgery. As it will play out I expect this story to become more explosive as details will come out, along with, what I'm sure will be, more sweeping and comprehensive stories than I can possibly put together on short notice here!