Prosecutor asks for jail term for tortured Muslim cleric
(ANSA) – Milan, November 22 – A prosecutor on Friday requested a jail term of almost seven years for Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr who was snatched off a Milan street by intelligence agents more than 10 years ago, triggering an international incident.
Prosecutors requested a jail term of six years and eight months at the trial, in absentia, into charges of international terrorism against Nasr, who was also known as Abu Omar.
In February 2003, he was seized by the CIA in an “extraordinary rendition operation” and taken to Egypt where he was tortured for information concerning allegations he associated with international terrorists.
Anti-terrorism prosecutors now say that even though 10 years have passed, they still have questions about his actions between the years 2000 and 2003, and his associates who may have been planning terrorist acts.
A decision by the judge in the case is expected next month.
Last September, Italy’s top court of appeals upheld the convictions of 22 CIA agents charged with abducting the cleric in the world’s first judicial examination of the controversial US practice of extraordinary rendition in its so-called war on terror.
The Court of Cassation confirmed the seven-year sentences for 22 of them and a nine-year term for former Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady.
However, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano later pardoned retired US air force officer Joseph L. Romano, convicted last year in absentia, for his role.
Nasr, an Islamist suspected of recruiting jihadi fighters, disappeared from a Milan street on February 17, 2003 and emerged from an Egyptian prison four years later claiming he had been tortured.
The cleric did not attend the trial of those accused of kidnapping him, and the courts awarded him one million euros in damages.
None of the CIA operatives has appeared in court in Italy in the case.
Nasr had been snatched by a team of CIA operatives with the help of Italian secret service agency SISMI and taken to a NATO base in Ramstein, Germany, en route to Cairo.
In the closely watched case, the agents’ terms were lengthened from 5-8 years to 7-9 years in December 2010.
The case had caused friction between Italy and the United States, which voiced its “disappointment” with the 2010 verdict.
Extraordinary rendition was first authorised by former American president Bill Clinton in the 1990s and stepped up when his successor George W. Bush declared war on terror after the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda.
Successive Italian governments denied all knowledge of the case and consistently ruled out the possibility of extradition.
The trial of Nasr claimed headlines worldwide and stoked discussion of rendition, which was extended by President Barack Obama in 2008 under the proviso that detainees’ rights should be respected.