Italy prosecutor, boss clash over CIA case

[deminks]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0511230254nov23,1,6901937.story


By John Crewdson
Tribune senior correspondent
Published November 23, 2005

NEW YORK -- The chief anti-terrorism prosecutor for northern Italy says he intends to prosecute 22 past and present CIA operatives on kidnapping charges "in absentia," an unusual though not unprecedented criminal proceeding that would likely lay bare some of the intelligence agency's most sensitive inner workings.

In an interview while attending an anti-terrorism conference here last week, the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, vowed to push ahead with the trial even if, as seems increasingly likely, none of the defendants will ever be extradited.

Spataro has asked the Italian justice minister, Roberto Castelli, to formally request that the Bush administration extradite the 22 CIA defendants to Milan to stand trial. Spataro dismissed charges by Castelli on Tuesday that the actions were politically motivated.

The Milan case that now threatens to further expose the once-secret practice the CIA calls "extraordinary rendition" stems from the February 2003 abduction of an Egyptian-born imam, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, as he walked from his Milan apartment to a nearby mosque.