CIA snatch imam sentenced to six years for terrorism

(By Denis Greenan).

(ANSA) – Milan, December 6 – A Muslim cleric whose extraordinary rendition by the CIA from Milan almost 11 years ago led to the world’s first judicial examination of the controversial practice in the so-called war on terror got a jail term of six years for international terrorism Friday. A Milan judge ruled the former imam in the northern Italian city, Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was part of an association “which aimed to carry out acts of violence with terrorist ends in Italy and abroad”.

Nasr and 13 others, many of whom have been jailed, acted for the Ansar al Islam group which had “a criminal plan shared with similar organisations active in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East,” the judge said.

Nasr, who was snatched off a Milan street by US intelligence agents in February 2003, is in Egypt and did not attend the trial.

In September 2012 Italy’s top court of appeals upheld the convictions of 22 CIA agents and a former US air force officer, Joseph L. Romano, for the abduction.

The Court of Cassation confirmed the seven-year sentences for 22 of them and a nine-year term for former Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano later pardoned Romano.

The CIA officers were formally facing extradition and Lady was arrested in Panama in July but freed a day later when the US government stepped in. He asked Italy for a pardon in September.

On December 16 the Cassation Court will start hearing the final appeals of the then head and No.2 of Italian secret service agency SISMI, Nicol