Wanted Poster: Robert Lady of CIA (case will blow CIA wide open)

WANTED: Robert Seldon Lady (Bob Lady), an ex-CIA agent (see PHOTO), for overseeing the abduction-for-torture (extraordinary rendition, as the CIA calls it) of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, aka Abu Omar.

IMAGES:
Robert Lady (left): Wanted for kidnapping/torture (CIA rendition)
Cell-phone record proves Lady was in Egypt, where Abu Omar was tortured.
USAF Col Joseph Romano (left) used air base to transport Abu Omar to torture.

Nasr was abducted by the CIA on February 17, 2003, in Milan, Italy, and transported via the USAF Aviano base to Egypt. Prosecutors in Milan have charged Bob Lady, the Milan station chief of the CIA; Jeffrey Castelli, the Rome station chief and ranking CIA man in Italy; Joseph Romano (see COLOR PHOTO), a US Air Force colonel who was in charge of security at Aviano; 24 other CIA operatives; and 9 Italian security men, including Luciano Pironi (in PHOTO with Lady). http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070409/bazzi

The Americans are long gone from Italy. However, they will be tried in absentia by a Milan court (the Milan Tribunal). Judge Caterina Interlandi has ordered the trial to start on June 8, 2007. This case, known in Italy as the Imam Rapito (cleric abduction), will dominate the news there.

All 35 suspects named here (except two Italians who have plea-bargained) are subject to arrest in any jurisdiction of the European Union. Anyone knowing their whereabouts should contact their national police or Interpol [go to http://www.interpol.int and email the General Secretariat or send a fax to Interpol in France at (33) 4 72 44 71 63].

Robert Seldon Lady, a neocon ex-CIA officer (retired January 2004), will be tried for overseeing the abduction ("rapito") of Abu Omar/Nasr and his subsequent transportation to Egypt, where Nasr was tortured. Lady also is charged with conspiracy in the matter. The warrant under which Lady is charged, issued by the Milan Tribunal, is No. 10838/05. http://www.statewatch.org/cia/documents/milan-tribunal-19-us-citizens-sought.pdf

WHERE’S ROBERT?

Since fleeing Italy in about January 2005, Robert Lady has lived at his father’s old addresses in Valle de Angeles, Honduras, and Punta Gorda, Florida. He has visited Spain and Switzerland as well as Honduras. Lady has been spotted in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC (on monthly visits to the CIA headquarters) and in Italian restaurants in the East Village section of Manhattan. http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,472537,00.html

Lady is reported to be a big man (height and girth) and to have a gray or graying beard and mustache. He is supposedly affable and outgoing. He speaks fluent Italian and Spanish (his mother was a Honduran and he was raised in Honduras) and may seek to blend into a Latino community.

He may dye his hair, shave facial hair, or effect other disguises. The PHOTO of Lady was taken sometime after September 2003.

Do not attempt to apprehend: Lady was trained in firearms use and hand-to-hand combat as a New York City policeman (in the 1970s) and by the CIA (beginning about 1980).

Lady was born in Tegucigalpa (Honduras) on May 21, 1954, to WIlliam (Billy, Bill) Seldon Lady and Maria Lady. He is a US citizen. His last address in Italy was via Don Bosco No. 40, in the city of Penango in the Asti region of Italy.

POSSIBLE U.S. CHARGES

The Bush Administration will refuse to extradite the American fugitives in the Imam Rapito (and the national government of Italy, showing very little respect for itself or the national sovereignty, has not asked them to). However, the torture aspect of the crime is punishable under U.S. federal law, even by death if the victim (Nasr) dies as a result.

U.S. Code: 18 USC Section 2340A: "Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life." (The current Italian charges are worth only up to 4 years’ imprisonment.)

Charges under this law will not be brought by the Bush Administration, but the political climate in the United States has changed considerably just since the November 2004 elections, and Bush is scheduled to leave office at the expiration of his term in January 2009.

SEE PROOF: LADY VISITED EGYPT RIGHT AFTER NASR WAS ABDUCTED AND WHILE HE WAS BEING TORTURED

There is plenty of evidence of all kinds in this case. There are witnesses and even one eyewitness. The depositions given by witnesses match electronic evidence such as that in the yellow/green cell-call TABLE, computer disks confiscated from Lady’s home, documentary evidence obtained from hotel records and Lady’s home, and much more. The witnesses have been proved reliable.

The telephone number of the cell phone Bob Lady used to talk with the conspirators under his command was 3480614737. As the charges made by prosecutors state: "On February 23rd 2003 the user of the appliance [380614737] moves to the province of Gorizia, and from that day no calls are made/received by the said number until 03/03/2003 when it receives two calls from an unidentified number, *while occupying a radio “cell” in Egypt*." In the TABLE of call records the prosecutors obtained from the cellular carrier, the calling number is in the first column and the called number is in the second column.

From this [TABLE information] the prosecutors infer that: "One can comfortably assume that the user of the said Vodafone card stayed in Egypt from February 22nd to March 15th 2003, i.e. during the first days of Abu Omar’s unlawful detention in Egypt, and when he was most likely being subject to the first spate of “treatment” [torture, described later]. These circumstances have been confirmed by the witness account made by Elbadry Mohamed Reda, according to whom Abu Omar (who had informed him) had already been transferred to Egypt in those days."

SIMILAR TABLES CORROBORATE WITNESS TESTIMONY AND SUPPORT ALL OF THE CHARGES IN IMAM RAPITO
There is extensive witness testimony of how the CIA carried out Imam Rapito, and the many tables in the warrant at http://www.statewatch.org/cia/documents/milan-tribunal-19-us-citizens-sought.pdf and other warrants prove the testimony to be true.

FURTHER PROOF OF LADY IN EGYPT was found when the police raided his home in Penango. On computer disks they found the following two emails confirming reservations for travel to Cairo via Zurich, Switzerland [see page 220 of http://www.statewatch.org/cia/documents/milan-tribunal-3-us-citizens-sought.pdf ]

[QUOTE] - Getmsg[1].html created on 02.20.03 at 11.20.48pm. It is an e-mail sent on 02.20.03 by
onlinesupport@nbportal.com to rslady01@hotmail.com, referring to: “AllRez. COM (travel
Reservation System) Confirmation n° 99880747 ASTOR HOTEL, in which there is a
confirmation for a booking made at the name of Robert S: Lady for a single room for Feb.
23 at the ASTOR HOTEL in Zurich (all.1);

– Getmsg[3].html created on 02.22.03 at 10.57.37pm. It is an e-mail sent on 02.21.03 by
contactus@swiss.com to rslady01@hotmail.com, referring to: “Your reservation at
SWISS.com” in which there is the confirmation for the booking nr VKJ7LY made under the
name of Robert S Lady on flight LX236 SWISS Zurich Cairo 09.45am / Feb. 24th, and
LX237 SWISS Cairo Zurich 04.10pm / March 7th. Please also note that the web page
crossair_w_passengerdc0e5c1c[1].html dated 02.21.2003 at 2.40.42pm containing the
details relative to the above mentioned flight booking (all. 2). [END QUOTE]

"IT’S NOT ’MAH’ FAULT!"

Mr. Lady’s original response to the charges against him was that he had diplomatic immunity (he was a spy using the U.S. embassy as a cover) and that the prosecutors couldn’t touch him and had no right to raid his home and garage.

"I WAS JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS."

This was Mr. Lady’s second defense, and the one he uses now. He says — and most media, mainstream and other, take this at face value — that he was opposed to the abduction of Mr. Nasr because it would damage intelligence work of the Italians, who were investigating Nasr as a Muslim militant, and would damage the relationship between Italian and American intelligence. The truth is, he is a neocon who worked with leading neocons like John Negroponte and Michael Ledeen in Latin America way back in the 1980s.

Of course the media swallow the "just following orders line" because they are in basically the same business as the CIA: propaganda. The truth is that the CIA is ineffective and should be disbanded and replaced. It did not provide intelligence to prevent 9/11. The agency is useless because no one — probably not even the president — knows when to believe them. (They could even be a physical threat to the president if he opposed their operations.) Their stock in trade is lies, not useful truths.

The "just following orders from higher up"/good soldier defense was used by the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials, and it is as meaningless now as it was then. Lady uses it because, as he admitted in a recent interview, he is resigned to being convicted if tried.

Bob Lady’s present hope — and the hope of the U.S. and Italian governments — is that the constitutional court of Italy will stop the trial by citing the interests of state security, as Italy’s attorney general asked it to do in February and as some in the Italian parliament are urging. However, the "secrets" presented here are already open-source information. The rapito from Italian soil by a foreign power is a breach of Italy’s national security and sovereignty. Thus, it would be very interesting to see what creative writing the constitutional court must use to justify stopping the trial.

TO CONTINUE READING, GO TO THE ARTICLE AT: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/81719