Cleric's story of abduction, torture - Letter opening salvo in CIA officers' trial

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070107abuomar-main-story,1,7418553.story?coll=chi-news-hed

CAIRO -- "This is how they kidnapped me from Italy ... and how they tortured and imprisoned me in Egypt."

So begins a 6,300-word, handwritten letter, composed in an Egyptian prison cell by radical Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr. His abduction by the CIA is at the center of an unprecedented judicial proceeding set to open in Italy this week that may ultimately expose to public view one of the agency's most sensitive and controversial operations in its secret war on terror.

In a kidnapping case against 26 Americans and five Italian intelligence operatives, including the one-time CIA chief in Rome and Italy's former top spymaster, Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, will speak to the court through his letter, telling his story for the first time in his own words.

According to Abu Omar's written account, obtained by the Tribune, he was walking to his mosque in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, when he was stopped on the street by a man who identified himself as a police officer. The cleric wrote that he was pulled into a van, beaten and taken by plane to Egypt.

He described in detail how his Egyptian interrogators tried to get him to agree to become an informer, and he says he refused. What followed, according to his letter, was torture with electric shocks, beatings that caused him to lose the hearing in one ear, and sexual abuse.

[Kagemusha]

1. I find laughable the notion the CIA people will be tried, just or not

and let me be clear, I think the "not" is the case. But there's just no way that the US is going to allow CIA officials to be imprisoned by Italy for conducting national security business on behalf of Uncle Sam.

[magellan]

2. Good god

I had no idea this case was going to be heard. Let's hope the Italian court gives this man some justice.

[johan helge]

3. Hear, hear!

Torture should have been higher on the political agenda.