7.03.2005
Abducted Imam Aided CIA Ally (ChicagoTribune.com)
Last month, Italian authorities charged 13 CIA operatives with kidnapping an Islamic cleric known as Abu Omar. Now former Albanian intelligence officials reveal that the imam was once an informant valued by the CIA.
By John Crewdson and Tom Hundley
Tribune correspondents
Published July 2, 2005, 10:30 AM CDT
MILAN, Italy — Among the multiple mysteries swirling around the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in Italy, one stands out as by far the most perplexing.
Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?
Neither the Bush administration nor the CIA has acknowledged any role in the operation. But U.S. government officials privately paint Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, as a dangerous terrorist who once plotted to kill the Egyptian foreign minister and was worthy of an audacious daylight abduction involving more than 20 operatives, weeks of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition that she not be identified, asserted: "The world's a better place with this guy off the streets."
But evidence gathered by prosecutors here, who have charged 13 CIA operatives with Abu Omar's kidnapping, indicates that the abduction was a bold attempt to turn him back into the informer he once was.
As a result, Italian-American relations are at their lowest point in years, 13 Americans are fugitives from Italian justice, and Milanese prosecutors and police, who had been closely monitoring Abu Omar and knew nothing about his planned abduction, are furious.
"Instead of having an investigation against terrorists, we are investigating this CIA kidnapping," a senior prosecution official fumed last week.
According to the prosecutor's application for the 13 warrants, when Abu Omar reached Cairo on a CIA-chartered aircraft, he was taken straight to the Egyptian interior minister.
(More ... Chicago Tribune news : Nation/World) ¶ 20:53
By John Crewdson and Tom Hundley
Tribune correspondents
Published July 2, 2005, 10:30 AM CDT
MILAN, Italy — Among the multiple mysteries swirling around the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in Italy, one stands out as by far the most perplexing.
Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?
Neither the Bush administration nor the CIA has acknowledged any role in the operation. But U.S. government officials privately paint Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, as a dangerous terrorist who once plotted to kill the Egyptian foreign minister and was worthy of an audacious daylight abduction involving more than 20 operatives, weeks of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition that she not be identified, asserted: "The world's a better place with this guy off the streets."
But evidence gathered by prosecutors here, who have charged 13 CIA operatives with Abu Omar's kidnapping, indicates that the abduction was a bold attempt to turn him back into the informer he once was.
As a result, Italian-American relations are at their lowest point in years, 13 Americans are fugitives from Italian justice, and Milanese prosecutors and police, who had been closely monitoring Abu Omar and knew nothing about his planned abduction, are furious.
"Instead of having an investigation against terrorists, we are investigating this CIA kidnapping," a senior prosecution official fumed last week.
According to the prosecutor's application for the 13 warrants, when Abu Omar reached Cairo on a CIA-chartered aircraft, he was taken straight to the Egyptian interior minister.
(More ... Chicago Tribune news : Nation/World) ¶ 20:53
