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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: December 16, 2006 4:16:11 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: No National Sovereignty, No International Law, under
"Emperor" George Bush
Testimony Helps Detail CIA's Post-9/11 Reach
Europeans Told of Plans for Abductions
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 16, 2006; A01
MILAN -- A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA
station chief in Rome paid a visit to the head of Italy's military
intelligence agency, Adm. Gianfranco Battelli, to float a proposal:
Would the Italian secret services help the CIA kidnap terrorism
suspects and fly them out of the country?
The CIA man did not identify which targets he had in mind but was
"expressly referring to the possibility of picking up a suspected
terrorist in Italy, bringing him to an airport and sending him from
there to a foreign country," Battelli, now retired, recalled in a
deposition.
This initial secret contact and others that followed, disclosed in
newly released documents, show the speed and breadth with which the
CIA applied in post-9/11 Europe a tactic it had long reserved for
the Third World -- "extraordinary rendition," the extrajudicial
abduction of Islamic radicals overseas for interrogation in
friendly countries.
A year after the first contact, the CIA officer held another
meeting with his Italian counterparts, this time sharing a list of
more than 10 "dangerous people" the agency was tracking in Italy,
Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands, according to a deposition
from Gen. Gustavo Pignero, another high-ranking Italian military
intelligence official. "It was clear that this was an aggressive
search project, that their willingness to employ illicit means was
clear," Pignero said, adding that the list was later destroyed and
he could not recall the names.
U.S. spies drew up suspect lists with the help of European
intelligence agencies and chased some of the men around the globe
before putting a brake on the operations in early 2004, about a
year after the invasion of Iraq, according to documents unearthed
in criminal investigations, lawsuits and parliamentary inquiries.
All told, the U.S. agency took part in the seizure of at least 10
European citizens or legal immigrants, some of them from countries
not cited in that list of "dangerous people" received by the
Italian spies. Four renditions occurred on European soil: in
Sweden, Macedonia and Italy. Six operations targeted people who
were traveling abroad or who had been captured in Pakistan;
European intelligence agencies provided direct assistance to the
CIA in at least five of those cases, records show.
Each prisoner was then secretly handed over to intelligence
services in the Middle East or Africa with histories of human
rights abuses. Some remain imprisoned in those countries; others
have been taken to the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
One man was later released after being taken from the Balkans to
Afghanistan, the victim of an apparent case of mistaken identity.
In the early stages, the CIA had prepared even more ambitious
plans, according to the depositions from the Italian intelligence
officials, who testified last summer during a criminal
investigation into a CIA-sponsored kidnapping of a radical Islamic
cleric in Milan.
For example, Pignero said in his deposition that the CIA's Rome
station chief had offered in 2002 to abduct a fugitive leader of
the Red Brigades -- a Marxist network blamed for dozens of
assassinations in Italy -- who had found refuge in South America.
"The Americans would capture him and turn him over to us, and we in
return would have to 'extradite' him to Italy without any legal
proceedings," Pignero said.
In exchange, the CIA wanted help in abducting Islamic radicals
living in the Italian cities of Turin, Vercelli and Naples, Pignero
said. Italian intelligence officials rejected the offer, he added,
because it was "contrary to international laws."
Reports of clandestine CIA operations have fueled deep public anger
in Europe, where many people regard renditions as a blatant
violation of national sovereignty and international law. Since last
year, prosecutors have opened four separate criminal investigations
into CIA activities in Europe. A dozen countries have conducted
legislative inquiries into whether local spy agencies were involved.
Last month, a European Parliament committee investigating CIA
operations in Europe condemned the practice of rendition "as an
illegal and systematic instrument used by the United States" and
called it "counterproductive in the fight against terrorism."
"I think that after the 11th of September, the CIA thought that all
the ways useful to capture their enemies, the alleged terrorists,
were now possible," Giovanni Claudio Fava, an Italian legislator
who led the parliamentary probe, said in an interview in Brussels.
"They wanted to clean Europe of all these dangerous, alleged
terrorists. They didn't have faith in the quality and capacity of
our own security controls and our justice system."
In the past year, U.S. officials have sought to repair the
diplomatic damage. They have met repeatedly with their European
counterparts to defuse opposition to renditions, the U.S. military
prison at Guantanamo and the disclosure in November 2005 that the
CIA had set up secret prisons for terrorism suspects in Eastern
Europe.
John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, said U.S. diplomats have made some headway. But
he added that ongoing political disputes have "undermined
cooperation and intelligence activities."
"I'd say that many European government officials and academics
acknowledge now that there is a legal murkiness that applies to
international terrorism," he said in a telephone interview from
Washington. "On the negative side of the ledger, we do continue to
have these hysterical, inflated allegations denouncing the United
States that unfortunately do fan the flames of suspicion and anti-
Americanism."
The CIA declined to comment.
'He Was Too Loud'
The most detailed disclosures about the CIA's European rendition
project have emerged from Milan, where Italian prosecutors have
spent two years investigating the disappearance of Hassan Mustafa
Osama Nasr, a militant Egyptian-born cleric known as Abu Omar.
When Nasr vanished in February 2003, police and prosecutors in
Milan thought at first that he had slipped out of the country on
his own, perhaps to join resistance forces in Iraq in advance of
the U.S.-led invasion. The CIA lent credence to their suspicions a
few months later, when it delivered an intelligence bulletin to
Rome stating that Nasr had been seen in the Balkans.
In fact, prosecutors later discovered, Nasr had been grabbed on the
street in Milan as he was walking to a mosque and stuffed into a
white van, which sped to Aviano Air Base, a joint U.S.-Italian
military installation. From there, he was put on a plane to
Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and onward to Cairo, where Nasr
claims he was tortured for months with electric shocks and sexually
abused.
Prosecutors in Milan have since issued arrest warrants on
kidnapping charges for 25 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force
officer, alleging that they conspired with Italian secret service
agents to abduct Nasr. Although none of the Americans is likely to
be extradited to Italy, prosecutors have served notice that they
intend to try them in absentia and asked a judge last month to
formally indict the defendants.
Senior Italian intelligence officials have also been charged in the
case, including Gen. Nicolo Pollari, director of the Italian
military intelligence agency known as SISMI. Pignero, his former
deputy, was arrested in June, shortly after he gave his deposition
to prosecutors. He died of cancer three months later, on Sept. 11.
European investigators are still examining other mysterious cases
of ["disappeared"] people. Among them is the disappearance a few
weeks before Nasr's kidnapping of another Egyptian-born Islamic
fundamentalist.
Gamal al-Menshawi, a physician and occasional mosque preacher who
knew Nasr personally, had left his home in Graz, Austria, bound for
the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. His wife was waiting
for him there, but he never arrived, according to Egyptian exiles
in Austria and Italy who know him.
Menshawi's trail vanished after he arrived in Amman, Jordan, for a
flight connection. He later surfaced in Egypt. European Parliament
investigators have concluded he was detained there for two years
without facing charges.
He was released in 2005 and is living in Alexandria, Egypt,
according to Austrian journalists. He has severed contact with
friends and colleagues in Europe, who strongly suspect he was
subjected to a rendition, although they lack proof or direct
evidence of U.S. involvement.
Arman Ahmed al-Hissini, imam of the Viale Jenner mosque in Milan
and an acquaintance of Menshawi and Nasr, said both have been
silenced by the Egyptian security services.
"The Arab secret services, they give names to the CIA of people who
they want, people who are on the outside, such as Europe," said
Hissini, an Egyptian native known locally as Abu Imad. "They give
the names to the CIA, because the CIA can go to work in these
countries."
There is also little doubt about Menshawi's fate among those who
knew him in Austria's Islamic community.
"I see the American government as being primarily responsible,"
said Mohamed Mahmoud, chairman of a group called Islamic Group of
Austria. "This is not the first time someone has disappeared."
"The Americans look around in Europe for who is being loud, who is
speaking out, and then those people are kidnapped," he added. "He
was very vocal; he was too loud for them. He talked openly about
Egypt's government, about the U.S. government, about the Islamic
community in Austria."
'They Needed Information'
About the same time, another Islamic militant from Austria
disappeared during a stopover at the Amman airport.
Masaad Omer Behari, a Sudanese citizen who had lived in Austria for
more than a decade, has said he was arrested by Jordanian secret
service agents on Jan. 12, 2003, as he was traveling home to Vienna
from a trip to Sudan.
Behari told European Parliament investigators in October that he
was held for three months in a Jordanian prison, where he was
interrogated about Islamic militants in Austria and elsewhere in
Europe. "On the first day I was in prison, they told me they did
not think I was a terrorist, but that they needed information about
the Islamic scene in Vienna," he said.
Documents obtained by the investigators show that Behari had been
under surveillance by Austria's domestic intelligence service since
1998, when he was interrogated about an alleged plot to blow up the
U.S. Embassy in Vienna. Behari said he was innocent and never faced
charges, but was pressured by Austrian secret service agents to
leave the country after the Sept. 11 hijackings.
"I have experienced hard times because I did not cooperate with the
security authorities in Europe and with the Americans," Behari
said, according to a transcript of his testimony. The Austrians
"threatened me that they would cause me problems. I thought it was
only 'blah-blah,' but it was the truth."
Austrian authorities said they have not opened official inquiries
into the disappearances of Menshawi or Behari, in part because
neither is an Austrian citizen.
"Since the alleged abductions did not take place on Austrian soil,
in an Austrian airplane or on an Austrian ship, we see no need for
action," said Rudolf Gollia, spokesman for the Austrian Interior
Ministry.
Special correspondent Shannon Smiley in Berlin contributed to this
report.