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July 09, 2005
Crewdson: CIA, Italy Both Were Supposed To Deny Kidnap Operation
In a profile on Armando Spataro, "the Italian prosecutor who has charged 13 CIA operatives with kidnapping a radical Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan," Chicago Tribune reporter John Crewdson noted that: Despite the Italian government's emphatic denials, newspapers in Italy and the United States are quoting unnamed sources saying a senior Italian intelligence official, maybe more than one, gave a wink and a nod to the CIA's plan to make Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, disappear into the bowels of an Egyptian prison in February 2003.
The operation reportedly was to be denied by both sides if it went wrong, as it most certainly has, thanks to a series of lax practices by the abductors - communicating via cell phones instead of radios, staying in hotels instead of safe houses, in a few cases using their real names - that permitted the judicial police of Milan, who work directly for Spataro, to reconstruct the operation almost minute by minute.Mr. Crewdson said, "Some Bush administration officials suggest that Spataro might be driven by politics or personal ambition. But those who have followed his career, including several lawyers who practice before Milan's Tribunale, describe Spataro with the same words: very serious, very tough, very competent, very straight."
For more see "Italian Prosecutor Runs With The Evidence.".
Posted by Munir Umrani at July 9, 2005 01:03 PM
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