Thursday, November 5, 2009

More Fallout From Bush's Illegal "Extraordinary Renditioning" Program

An Italian judge has convicted 23 Americans (all but one of them CIA agents) and two Italian secret agents for the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric. Three Americans and five Italians were acquitted by the court in Milan.

Abu Omar was the victim of the CIA's widely condemned program of "extraordinary renditions", where victims are kidnapped with due process of the law, shipped off to foreign countries and detained for long periods with access to lawyers or their home government.

Omar was snatched in broad daylight on a Milan street in February 2003 and flown to Germany, and then Cairo, where he was tortured and held for years until being released without charge.

The Americans were all tried in their absence as the Bush Administration refused to extradite them to Italy. The CIA's Milan station chief at the time, Robert Lady, was given an eight-year term, while the other 22 Americans convicted - one of them a U.S. air force colonel - were sentenced to five years in prison. Lawyers for the 23 Americans said they would appeal against their convictions.

The two Italian agents, who were convicted as accomplices to kidnapping, were given three-year prison terms. The court also ruled that those convicted must pay $1.5 million in damages to Abu Omar and $750,000 to his wife.

CIA spokesman George Little declined to comment on the convictions.

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