Italy warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/12/23/italy.warrants/index.html?section=cnn_latest

ROME, Italy (AP) -- A judge has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives in connection with the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in 2003, a prosecutor said Friday.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro said the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 EU member countries. Previously, Italy had issued arrest warrants for the 22 inside Italy.

The operation was believed part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries where some allegedly are subjected to torture.

Prosecutors say the cleric's abduction was a serious violation of Italian sovereignty, and that it had hindered Italian terrorism investigations.

Glad to see Europeans getting in the Bush face.

or was that torture?

its about time someone made them accountable for their actions.

Looks like the Italians are fed up...this comes on the heels of the Italian gov't announcing an investigation into the roadblock assassination of their spy.

Big problem is that it looks like BushCo is no more interested in respecting Italian law than they are American law...

Good Luck...

I think that's why they killed Nicola Calipari. He probably knew too much about the yellowcake forgeries.

When ... bush was questioned about tribal sovereignty in the 21st century at a gathering of minority journalists he responded: "Tribal sovereignty means that. It's sovereign. You're a ... you're a ... you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/10/149259

Good luck, Italy, explaining Italian sovereignty to the Dunce of the World.

What with the Italian angle and all.

Damn, that joke is so bad I think it soiled my computer chair.

Have some Freedom Noodles with marinara sauce.

Orwellian twist to beat all Orwellian twists that they claim to be "fighting" it.

This isn't the first "terrorist" investigation they have interfered with, or bungled, or stopped. And they started off by funding and arming BOTH Osama bin Laden AND Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. Just off the top of my head...

1. The "gagging" of Sibel Edmonds (spies, crooks, traitors in the FBI translation division).

2. Forcing John O'Neil out of the FBI (Saudi/OBL money trail in Yemen.) (Summer '01--he took the job as head of security at the WTC and died on 9/11).

3. Refusing FBI agent Colleen Rowley access to the "20th hijacker"'s computer (also summer '01).

4. Letting all the bin Ladens fly secretly out of the U.S. just after 9/11, before any of them were questioned--and while all other US flights were still grounded.

5. Stonewalling the 9/11 Commission; fighting it every step of the way; Prez and VP refusing to testify except, a) with no notes taken, and no recording devices; b) not under oath; c) not separately; and d) to a highly select group, not the whole panel, and not in public. Biggest security failure in US history--and the ONLY security failure of NORAD and the US Air Force to follow SOP for off-course aircraft--and we will don't know why. They couldn't even protect our nation's capitol.

6. Outing a covert CIA operation--Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings--a worldwide counter-proliferation network, 20 years in the making, whose covert agents/contacts were all put at risk of death by the outing, and whose projects were all disabled. God knows what they were working on. (My guess: Manucher Ghorbanifar, Iranian arms dealer at the Rome meeting where the Niger forgeries were cooked up, procuring and trying to plant WMDs to be "found' in Iraq after the invasion. I suspect that's why Plame/BJ were outed, and why David Kelly was killed four days later.)

7. Perjury and obstruction of justice in the Grand Jury investigation of the CIA outing.

I'm sure others could add to this list. It's hard to keep track of HOW MANY TIMES the Bush junta has destroyed "terrorist" investigations and endangered this country's security. And, clearly, with the Iraq war, they have done just the opposite of insuring our safety. They not only hampered all the professionals in assessing Iraq WMDS--and in fact threw the UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq by the invasion--they INVENTED false intelligence, and created an entire new division to fuck up other people's investigations and create their own intel out of whole cloth--in order to justify the worst endangerment of our security since they let 9/11 happen: the Iraq war itself. If ever people had motivation to attack us again, it would be the families of the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis whom the Bushites have slaughtered, and the many they have tortured and unjustly imprisoned.

In this context, their fuckup of the Italians' investigation of the Egyptian cleric seems par for the course.

There is no worse threat to our security than the Bush junta itself.

Aren't CIA agents protected now? :shrug:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4619377.stm


Italy seeks 'CIA kidnap agents'
US military base of Aviano, northern Italy
The imam was allegedly driven to a US military base after his abduction
Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for 13 people they claim are agents "linked to the CIA".

The suspects are accused of abducting an Islamic cleric in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt for interrogation.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was already being investigated in Italy as part of a terrorism inquiry.

Italian prosecutors believe the operation was part of a controversial US anti-terror policy known as "extraordinary rendition".

The policy involves seizing suspects and taking them to third countries without court approval.

Human rights organisations say some of the countries to which terror suspects have been deported are known to use torture, and critics have branded it "torture by proxy".

The US embassy in Rome has not commented on the arrest warrants issued against the 13 people - 10 men and three women.

Also on Friday, another Milan-based judge issued an arrest warrant for the Egyptian-born imam himself, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. <snip>


I'm thrilled but nearly speechless.

btw, PetraPooh, you might want to edit your Subject line. The rules of the Latest Breaking News forum require that you use the headline of the actual article. You'll find the "edit" link down at the bottom right hand side of your post. Just copy the title into the subject line.

We captured OSAMA!!! Woohoo

>Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was already being investigated in Italy as part of a terrorism inquiry.

That's the guy, right? Osama Mustafa Hassan. Right? Guys...?

Although it is encouraging to see international resistance to illegal government actions and covert government sponsored crime organizations, it is embarrassing to know that we, the citizens of the US, are ultimately responsible for our governments actions.

How has it come to this.

in my opinion.

It means that the U.S. is now being recognized as a rogue state. I'm sure the White House will bury this story quickly. It's good to rememeber we comprise about 3.8% of the world's population. We're not the ruler of the world, in spite of the propaganda.

Let's look at the implications of this: these 22 CIA agents are now wanted for arrest. Since other countries will cooperate with this warrant, their careers are over. They will be hiding out. They can't ever leave the US.

Now, talk about paranoid. These people wrote the book on secretive tactics. They will want to disappear, and they will hope that the US will give them cover.

This is the world striking back. Even if it's symbolic, it's still sending a message to Washington: "our patience has run out".