Washington Post:
An Italian court on Wednesday convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of orchestrating the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he said he was later tortured.
The 23 were tried in abstentia; Italian prosecutors want to extradite them, but the Post gives no details as to what demands they will make.
The case is the only instance in which CIA operatives have faced a criminal trial for the controversial tactic of extraordinary rendition, under which terrorism suspects are seized in one country and forcibly transported to another without judicial oversight. A similar case involving a German citizen kidnapped in the Balkans has resulted in arrest warrants and a civil lawsuit but has not gone to trial.
More on the case here (the link is a NY Times article written prior to today's convictions, but it provides more context on the charges, proposed sentences, and other details of the case). I am not an expert on international law and will not speculate on what this case might mean for other attempts to try Americans for rendition, nor for the likelihood of the 23 convicted to ever get extradited. The man abducted in the case decided today, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, is also pursuing civil claims in the European Court of Human Rights. Between extradition proceedings and the civil case, this story is by no means over.
This is a pretty skeletal diary, but I wrote it because it seems to me a foreign court convicting Americans for rendition is a significant development. I am curious to hear what (if any) comments Dick Cheney has about the case. Should anyone reading this have a grasp on international law and this case's implications, please add your comments below.
UPDATE: I changed the wording of the title; as pointed out below, the convictions were specifically for kidnapping. The Post story has added context since I first posted, including the following:
Armando Spataro, the deputy public prosecutor in Milan, said in his closing argument Wednesday that it was "unthinkable" that the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition should trump Italian law, which forbids kidnapping.
"Here, Italian law rules, not American law or any other law," he said.
Here is a link to the BBC's coverage of the case. The link is to a brief story on today's convictions, but it also points to a half dozen stories the BBC has run on the case over the past two years.
UPDATE 2: I recommend that people go to danger durden's diary for more context on this case.