Reuters is carrying only a brief entry stating: "MILAN (Reuters) - A Milan court has issued a European arrest warrant for 22 CIA agents suspected of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric [Omar] from the city in 2003, a judicial source said on Friday.
Milan magistrates suspect that a team of 22 CIA agents grabbed Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off a Milan street and flew him for interrogation to Egypt, where he was reportedly tortured."
This is the next to last step before the Italian government makes a request for their extradition. Adnkronosinternational has a more extensive coverage of the matter...below
Spataro is seeking to get the 22 agents extradited from the United States, but the request is still with the Italian justice minister Roberto Castelli, who has asked for more court documentation before deciding whether to approve the request, a step which is usually a formality.
The evidence is mounting against the CIA:
Italian police tracked down the operatives involved through the signals sent out by their mobile phones, allowing them to pinpoint the agents' movements on a minute-by-minute basis. Several of the phones were said to be the service phones of US diplomatic staff in Rome, and were used to place calls to the US consulate in Milan and a number in Virginia (the US state where the CIA headquarters are located).
The head of the CIA's substation in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, is also identified as being involved in the operation. Italian investigators found a photograph of Abu Omar on his computer, taken on the street he was seized from 33 days before he disappeared. His wife had deleted all the files on his computer, but on rebuilding the hard drive, police are reported to have found evidence that he had run searches for the shortest route to Aviano from the Milan street where Omar was kidnapped. A list of the luxurious hotels where the agents stayed in Milan was found in the rubbish bin in Lady's garage.
Evidence was also uncovered indicating that Lady was in Cairo during the two weeks when Omar is said to have suffered the most violent interrogation. Investigators tracked down two airplane tickets showing that he flew to Cairo from Zurich on 24 February 2003, and returned to Italy on 7 March.
Lady, who has since retired from the CIA, has hired an Italian lawyer to get the charges against him thrown out. His lawyer filed a motion saying his actions had "explicit, or at least implicit authorisation from the Italian government," and arguing that the evidence seized from his home was obtained illegally. However, last week, in a written opinion upholding the arrest warrant, Italian judge Enrico Manzi dismissed the claim of lack of proof against Lady, saying the evidence taken from his home "removes any doubt about his participation in the preparatory phase of the abduction."
As to our kinder and gentler torture, Omar tells us:
...he had been subjected to freezing temperatures and electric shocks which left him partially paralysed.
Still a developing story and we'll see what Castelli decides to do. Because of the evidence and the politics in Italy, I don't see how he can reject extradition of the agents, unless Berlusconi admits he authorized the kidnapping, which would be political suicide for him.