Deutsche Welle, 12 February 2013
Italy's
former military intelligence chief, Nicolo Pollari, has been sentenced to 10
years in prison for his role in the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric from Milan to
Egypt. The operation was a CIA-led rendition.
An appeals
court in Milan on Tuesday sentenced Nicolo Pollari to 10 years in prison for
his involvement in a 2003 CIA rendition when he was the head of SISMI, Italy's
military intelligence agency.
Pollari's
SISMI deputy at the time, Marco Mancini, was given nine years behind bars.
Three less senior SISMI staff members were each sentenced to six years in jail.
One of
Pollari's lawyers, Nicola Madia, said he was disturbed by the decision and that
his client would appeal to Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation. If the verdict
is contested, Pollari and the other defendants will not have to go to jail
until their legal options are exhausted.
Pollari did
not defend himself in court, saying via his legal team that doing so would
violate his promises to keep state secrets.
Egyptian
Muslim cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan, more commonly called Abu Omar, was abducted
from Milan and flown to Egypt for interrogation as part of the so-called
"war on terror." The operation was organized by US authorities.
Italy's
Ansa news agency also reported that Omar was awarded a provisional 1 million
euros ($1.35 million) in damages, as well as a further 500,000 euros for his
wife.
First case
of its kind
Abu Omar
had been granted political asylum in Italy at the time of his kidnapping. He
was flown first to a US base in Germany and then on to Cairo, where he says he
was tortured.
The cleric's
lawyers were seeking 10 million euros in damages.
Despite
prosecution efforts against US officials, charges against Italian SISMI agents
were at first blocked by government efforts to invoke state secrecy laws and
shield them from prosecution. However, Italy's Court of Cassation annulled that
decision last September. Pollari had the public support of former Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
An American
former CIA station chief was sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison in
the case - one of 23 CIA agents to be convicted in absentia for involvement in
the "extraordinary rendition." That 2009 verdict was the first in the
world to assign rendition responsibility to US operatives.
Such
renditions, which most famously took terror suspects to the US detainment
facility at Guantanamo Bay, were part of the policies launched in the aftermath
of the September 11, 2001 attacks by then-US President George W. Bush.
msh/jlw (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)
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