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Italy dismisses top chief of intelligence
He's accused of helping the CIA in a 2000 abduction; 26 Americans are still being sought
By TRACY WILKINSON
Los Angeles Times
ROME ââ¬â Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Monday dismissed the government's top intelligence chief, a veteran spymaster under investigation for his role in the alleged CIA abduction of a radical Egyptian cleric from Milan three years ago.
With his removal, intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari became the highest-level Italian official to lose his job over the case, widening suspicions that the previous Italian government more closely collaborated with the CIA than has been acknowledged.
Pollari's No. 2 was arrested over the summer, and Italian prosecutors are seeking the arrest of 26 Americans, mostly CIA operatives. The Americans are accused of seizing the cleric and then transporting him secretly to Egypt, where he has claimed he was tortured.
Pollari denied having advance knowledge of the cleric's abduction. But testimony from colleagues and evidence gleaned from police wiretaps suggest otherwise.
Pollari, who led the military intelligence agency known as SISMI, might face indictment. A closed-door session of the parliament's intelligence committee begins debating his fate today. Portions of the committee's draft report, released last week, accused Pollari of lying to authorities and covering up SISMI's involvement in the case.
Cleric Hassan Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was seized in February 2000 as he walked to a mosque in Milan. His was one of dozens of so-called extraordinary renditions that the U.S. government executed as part of its attempt to pursue terrorist suspects. Many suspects ended up in third countries known to practice torture or in clandestine prisons run by the CIA.
The CIA trail in the Abu Omar case has long been established: Italian prosecutors say CIA operatives left behind credit-card receipts and passport photocopies, and they chatted openly on their cellular telephones, all of which became evidence in dossiers compiled by prosecutors.
But the involvement of Italian authorities remained less clear. The then-government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of the Bush administration, denied knowledge of the abduction, but intelligence experts and much of the Italian public believed it unlikely Berlusconi's administration was unaware of such an action.
Foremost, it seemed unimaginable that CIA operatives would have acted with such apparent disregard for secrecy if they hadn't been assured of official permission.
All of the Americans named by Italian prosecutors, including the former CIA station chiefs in Rome and Milan, are no longer in Italy and their arrests seem unlikely.
He's accused of helping the CIA in a 2000 abduction; 26 Americans are still being sought
By TRACY WILKINSON
Los Angeles Times
ROME ââ¬â Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi on Monday dismissed the government's top intelligence chief, a veteran spymaster under investigation for his role in the alleged CIA abduction of a radical Egyptian cleric from Milan three years ago.
With his removal, intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari became the highest-level Italian official to lose his job over the case, widening suspicions that the previous Italian government more closely collaborated with the CIA than has been acknowledged.
Pollari's No. 2 was arrested over the summer, and Italian prosecutors are seeking the arrest of 26 Americans, mostly CIA operatives. The Americans are accused of seizing the cleric and then transporting him secretly to Egypt, where he has claimed he was tortured.
Pollari denied having advance knowledge of the cleric's abduction. But testimony from colleagues and evidence gleaned from police wiretaps suggest otherwise.
Pollari, who led the military intelligence agency known as SISMI, might face indictment. A closed-door session of the parliament's intelligence committee begins debating his fate today. Portions of the committee's draft report, released last week, accused Pollari of lying to authorities and covering up SISMI's involvement in the case.
Cleric Hassan Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was seized in February 2000 as he walked to a mosque in Milan. His was one of dozens of so-called extraordinary renditions that the U.S. government executed as part of its attempt to pursue terrorist suspects. Many suspects ended up in third countries known to practice torture or in clandestine prisons run by the CIA.
The CIA trail in the Abu Omar case has long been established: Italian prosecutors say CIA operatives left behind credit-card receipts and passport photocopies, and they chatted openly on their cellular telephones, all of which became evidence in dossiers compiled by prosecutors.
But the involvement of Italian authorities remained less clear. The then-government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of the Bush administration, denied knowledge of the abduction, but intelligence experts and much of the Italian public believed it unlikely Berlusconi's administration was unaware of such an action.
Foremost, it seemed unimaginable that CIA operatives would have acted with such apparent disregard for secrecy if they hadn't been assured of official permission.
All of the Americans named by Italian prosecutors, including the former CIA station chiefs in Rome and Milan, are no longer in Italy and their arrests seem unlikely.
