Two Top Italian Officers Arrested Over CIA Kidnapping Plot
Shaveta Bansal - All Headline News Staff Writer Rome, Italy (AHN) - Italian Police on Wednesday arrested two top Italian intelligence agency officers on suspicion of helping the CIA in the alleged kidnapping of a terrorism suspect from Milan in 2003. The judicial sources named one of the officer arrested as Marco Mancini, a senior official at the Sismi intelligence agency. The arrest was later confirmed by former Italian President Francesco Cossiga in a statement. It is the for the first time an Italian official has been linked to the 2003 abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Nasr has said that he was flown to Egypt and tortured. An Italian court has also issued arrest warrants for four Americans adding to 22 earlier who are suspected over the abduction. No Italians had been sought until now. If an Italian role is confirmed, it would lend evidence to allegations that European countries conspired with the U.S. in the secret "renditions" of terrorism suspects. Abu Omar, who had been granted refugee status in Italy, was under investigation for his role in terrorism. The court documents accuse Nasr of having ties to al Qaeda and recruiting combatants for Iraq. Milan prosecutors probing the kidnap case believe Hassan was snatched by the CIA and taken to Aviano for interrogation, before being flown on to Cairo via Ramstein air base in Germany. They say the kidnapping broke Italian law |
