Italian court convicts 23 Americans of kidnapping in CIA rendition case

By Muriel Kane
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 -- 10:30 am
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cia Italian court convicts 23 Americans of kidnapping in CIA rendition caseUPDATE: One of the 23 American citizens convicted in an Italian court of kidnapping a Muslic cleric in 2003 says the CIA "broke the law" when it ordered the operation.

Sabrina DeSousa, a former CIA operative, told ABC News that the agency and the US government "betrayed and abandoned" her and the other US government employees who orchestrated the kidnapping as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, which saw terrorism suspects shipped to countries where they could be tortured within the confines of local law.

DeSousa a said she and the 22 other defendants in the case "are paying for the mistakes right now, whoever authorized and approved this."

ABC News reports:

Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), a member of the House Intelligence Committee told ABC News that the trial was a disaster for CIA officers like DeSousa on the frontline.

Story continues below...

"I think these people have been put out there. They've been hung out to dry. They're taking the fall potentially for a decision that was made by their superiors in our agencies. It's the wrong place to go."

ORIGINAL STORY FOLLOWS BELOW

Twenty three Americans have been convicted in absentia, after an Italian court found them guilty of kidnapping in the CIA rendition of a Muslim cleric, the Associated Press reports. Three other Americans were acquitted.

The New York Times reported earlier today, "Italian prosecutors have charged the American officials, all but one of them alleged to be agents of the Central Intelligence Agency, and seven members of the Italian military intelligence agency, in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors say the cleric was snatched in broad daylight, flown from an American air base in Italy to a base in Germany and then on to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured."

According to the Times, "The Italian counterterrorism prosecutor Armando Spataro is seeking 13-year jail terms for Jeff Castelli, a former C.I.A. station chief in Rome, and Nicolò Pollari, a former head of Italian military intelligence, for their suspected roles in the abduction. He is seeking 12-year terms for Robert Seldon Lady, who as C.I.A. station chief in Milan is accused of having coordinated the operation, and Sabrina De Souza, who worked in the United States Embassy in Rome and is accused of having worked closely with Mr. Lady."

Charges against Pollari and his deputy, as well as three other Italian defendants, were dropped "because Italy withheld evidence, contending it was classified information." Pollari is also known as the Italian official who first brought to the attention of the White House claims that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger.

Lady, a veteran of covert CIA operations in Latin America during Iran-Contra, was given the longest sentence, but his whereabouts are currently unknown. Lady said of the kidnapping in an interview last spring, “Of course it was an illegal operation. But that’s our job." He also claimed, ""I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors."

The Times notes that the case, which has been going on for three years, is the first to challenge the legality of the practice of "extraordinary rendition" and is "widely seen as a referendum on Bush administration foreign policy." The government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi, however, has refused to seek extradition of any of the Americans, making it questionable whether the guilty verdicts can be enforced.

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Story comments are below...
  • jimbo701
    "I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors."

    Isn't this what the guards at Germany's death camps said when they faced prosecution for genocide?
  • lorn
    Yeah that sure does ring hollow and insincere jimbo701. Such shallow lies only work on fools.

    Like this one from the Obama camp.

    We cannot prosecute Bush Cheney because it would hurt the troops.
    We cannot prosecute Bush Cheney because all future Presidents would just go out and prosecute their predecessors.
    We cannot prosecute Bush Cheney because we need to look forward.

    Some lies just don't stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. Of course getting wasted on Obama kool aid and engaging in mindless hero worship can render a person incapable of dealing with the truth.

    Obama is protecting Bush and Cheney from prosecution, every day.
  • philedrifter
    The office of the president is nothing more than a stage for marionettes. Both partys are owned by the federal reserve, which is why Ds and Rs are always guaranteed on every ballot, but any 3rd parties must collect an ungodly number of signatures just to get on the ballot.
  • disappointedvoter
    That more than anything else has turned me away from Obama.

    Obama sucks. Frankly, I can't think of a single thing he has done - actually DONE, rather than talk about or hint at - that is one whit different from what Bush was doing.
  • I remember how Sen. Daniel Inouye, himself a combat hero of WWII, dressed down Ollie North in the Iran/Contra hearings, saying "The Uniform Code of Military Justice is abundantly clear, that it must be a lawful order. In fact, officers are required to disobey unlawful orders."

    But maybe the takeaway message is, the CIA is not under the UMCJ, their job is to commit illegal acts (that's why they're covert, because they're illegal) and Truman, who signed them into reality, later regretted it (after the JFK assassination).

    JFK expressed the desire to "tear the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds". It would require a huge and sustained groundswell of support from the population, but the CIA's covert license can be rescinded. The Congress alone however will never get there.

    We who know need to hammer on it at every opportunity, and show them the evidence. What more can we do?
  • dennycrane
    The sun never sets on CIA activities.
  • decora
    ironically that is kind of what bush did when he reorganized the CIA to be under the Director of National Intelligence. the CIA is now just another of the 14+ intelligence agencies in the federal govt. the CIA director no longer calls all the shots.

    however, even if you got rid of the CIA, all the people you are worried about would go to some other agency and do naughty things. Please see the history of German Intelligence for example... the 'Abwehr' (defense intel) formed with so many lofty goals in the 10s/20s became just another nazi tool, ... and part of it ('foreign armies east intelligene division') became the cold war west german intelligence service ('gehlen organization'), populated with a lot of ex-nazis!

    it is not the name of the agency that matters, it is the illegal acts committed... so the solution imho is to go after those acts, and the people who commit them.... not any one agency.
  • "would go to some other agency and do naughty things"

    Oh, well, they already are. The NSA ("no such agency") is by far the biggest and most sinister, except not big on the wetwork. But there are "contractors" for every purpose.

    I'm fully aware that simplistic solutions don't work. What does have a useful effect is more universal awareness of the truth about all these criminal activities carried out on our dime.

    If enough citizens become fully aware of the outrage, things will change. That's our best use of time and effort, in my view.

    And speaking of ex-Nazis, Allen Dulles hired as many of their experts as he could with PROJECT PAPERCLIP into various US agencies, from NASA (which is less than half aerospace and more than half mind control, from what I hear), Fort Detrick, NIH, and a raft of others, with the excuse that "we can't let the Soviets get them", Dulles whom JFK fired for his shenanigans, who along with his brother were deeply invested in United Fruit, which by the way, now as Chiquita, is the chief actor behind the overthrow of Zelaya, just as it was in 1954 of Arbenz, Zelaya's crime being raising the minimum wage, same as Aristide. Then Dulles sat on the Warren Commission, making sure the truth didn't get out.

    By the way, I just typed out the whole transcript of the Jan 27 session which was classified until the FOIA by Harold Weisberg in the 70s pried it out of them. The PDF of the release is legible, but so poor in quality that it cannot be effectively searched, so I have textualized it at http://www.proudprimate.com/resources/wcjan27.htm for whomever wishes to use it.

    This is the session that Jim Marrs calls the "real smoking gun" in which the conversation between the members, with no others present, makes it clear that the "magic bullet" that made seven wounds in two men is totally insupportable, and that Oswald in Mexico City was a double that didn't closely resemble him.
  • miggy
    “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”
    “If we can cultivate in the world the idea that aggressive war-making is the way to the prisoner’s dock rather than the way to honors, we will have accomplished something toward making the peace more secure.”
    “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.”
    “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

    ~ Robert H. Jackson, chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

    The United States of America War Criminals:

    1. Bush
    2. Cheney
    3. Rumsfeld
  • bobdevo
    Forget not Condi Rice. She specifically okayed this snatch and grab operatiion
  • mick57
    The CONgress critters invested $198 MILLION in companies that rely on war to generate massive returns on their investments.And you think you will ever see them vote down a chance to end a war ...it is not in their best interest.
  • philedrifter
    Powell knowingly liked to the UN when he presented those 'mobile WMD-development labs' so don't forget him. And you can't forget Rove either.

    Bush Family's Partnership with Killers of Americans: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_09...

    250+ 9/11 Smoking Guns:
    http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/911smokingguns....
  • bobdevo
    Forget not Condi Rice. She specifically okayed this snatch and grab operatiion
  • bobdevo
    Forget not Condi Rice. She specifically okayed this snatch and grab operatiion
  • That about says it.

    Every Republican (except Ron Paul, who would most gladly do so anyway) and most Democrats should have to recite that as a password to gain entry every day to the corridors of power.
  • bobdevo
    Forget not Condi Rice. She specifically okayed this snatch and grab operatiion
  • buckqjohnson
    Thats exactly what I was thinking, just following orders doesn't justify you in doing a warcrime. And thats what we did, was facilitate and/or do torture. I feel sorry for our country, because our ignorant and greedy politicians have set up a situation where other countries will be able to come into our country and kidnap people and/or kill them. All empires end and we are an empire, when the hammer comes down on the US as a country financially we will be a broken people. We have burned through our empire phase so quickly that we are following the well worn path that all empires in history have travelled. We are going to be humbled and I don't think that many americans can accept that or take it, because for generations we have been told that WE not THEM are the leaders and brightest and the powerful (in a country of immigrants, yea). I predict that we will go down and become a country of 5 countries or more, because the states will group up and go it alone (heck california is the 8th largest economy in the world and it's just a state). And all our "friends" that we thought we had won't be their to help us, because like all bullies (which we are) sooner or later you fall and the "weak" jump on top to keep you down. Do you actually think that Britian likes being second or even 4th fiddle to a colony that they once had and having said colony dictate to a used to be empire like them what the world view will be, they don't.
  • "because our ignorant and greedy politicians have set up a situation . . . ."

    Even our knowledgeable and honest politicians are over the barrel due to the Supreme Court's rulings on Campaign Finance Reform, in particular Buckley v Vallejo, where "money" is equated with "speech" and the supposed "personhood of corporations" gives them 14th Amendment rights to buy elections via TV time. It's all based on a bogus comment ultra vires in the header of the Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad ruling from 1886, wrongly included by the clerk of the court who just happened to own a railroad.

    As long as every Senator, honest or no, has to beg $20,000 ever day of his tenure in order to be reelected, a free government will never come to power.

    One of the most hopeful signs was Sotomayor's comment in her maiden flight, that (WSJ):
    Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."
    .
  • rickpetes
    Bingo!
  • decora
    jimbo701: yes, many of them. on the other hand, rudolf hoess, who ran auschwitz, said that he came to realize he was guilty of a horrible crime. ... iirc it was just before he was hung to death by the polish govt.
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