*More arrests*. Berlusconi's gone and so it the protection he gave to SISMI. Romano Prodi's government has frogged-marched three high-ranking military intelligence men out of SISMI for having sacrificed their country's sovereignty to the interests of a foreign power (i.e., the USA and the CIA).
Update: More SISMI arrests on the way: Gen. Gustavo Pignero, former Trieste Station Chief Lorenzo Pillinini; former Padua Station Chief Marco Iodice; and, Milan Station Chief Maurizio Regondi.
SISMI is Italy's Military Intelligence and Security Service.
Under arrest are: SISMI Deputy Director Marco Mancini, Mancini's aide Giuseppe Ciorra, and Pio Pompa, aide to SISMI Director Niccolò Pollari (who, logically, would also involved).
These men are implicated in Nigergate, the death of Nicola Calipari and the abduction of Abu Omar by the CIA from a Milan sidewalk in broad daylight and "extraordinary rendition" .
The issue at the top of the heap at the moment is that SISMI brass had testified to Italian Parliament that Italy had nothing to do with the kidnapping of Abu Omar, when the SISMI Vice Director had coordinated the kidnapping with no less than six CIA agents. Issue number two is that SISMI brass tried to frame Premier Romano Prodi after he took office by bribing an executive, a desk editor and two reporters to publish a story in the newspaper Libero claiming that Prodi while serving as European Commissioner had authorized secret CIA prison flights to land in Italy and elsewhere in Europe.
Folks, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Italian magistrates are going to crack SISMI wide open and spill all the beans: the assassination beans, the bribery beans, the kidnapping beans, the forgery beans, the black ops beans and the undeniable fact that these men were on the CIA payroll.
