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Italy convicts 23 CIA agents for renditons
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: November 19th, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05italy.html
In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge ... convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003. The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to [torture]. The fact that Italy would actually convict intelligence agents of an allied country was seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases. Judge Oscar Magi handed an eight-year sentence to Robert Seldon Lady, a former C.I.A. base chief in Milan, and five-year sentences to the 22 other Americans, including an Air Force colonel and 21 C.I.A. operatives. Three of the other high-ranking Americans were given diplomatic immunity, including Jeffrey Castelli, a former C.I.A. station chief in Rome. Citing state secrecy, the judge did not convict five high-ranking Italians charged in the abduction, including a former head of Italian military intelligence, Nicol Pollari. All the Americans were tried in absentia and are considered fugitives. Armando Spataro, the counterterrorism prosecutor who brought the case, said he was considering asking the Italian government for an international arrest warrant for the fugitive Americans. Tom Parker, Amnesty Internationals United States point man for terrorism issues, called on the Obama administration to repudiate the unlawful practice of extraordinary rendition.
Note: The US government has refused to extradite to Italy the 23 Americans convicted in absentia of kidnapping. Yet the US is pressing for the extradition of 76-year-old Roman Polanski for fleeing the US after serious judicial malfeasance. For an analysis of these contradictions by US authorities over extradition, click here.
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