Italian anger over U.S. : 13 CIA workers ordered arrested

Italian anger over U.S. terror tactics deepens rift

By Stephen Grey and Don Van Natta Jr. The New York Times

MILAN The extraordinary decision by an Italian judge to order the arrest of 13 people linked to the CIA on charges of kidnapping a terrorism suspect here dramatizes a growing rift between American counterterrorism officials and their counterparts in Europe.

European counterterrorism officials have pursued a policy of building criminal cases against terrorism suspects through surveillance, wiretaps, detective work and the criminal justice system. The United States, however, has frequently used other means since Sept. 11, 2001, including renditions - abducting terror suspects from foreign countries and transporting them for questioning to third countries, some of which are known to use torture.

The two approaches seem to have collided for an Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, or Abu Omar, accused of leading a militant mosque in Milan.

By early 2003, the Italian secret police were aggressively pursuing a criminal terrorism case against Nasr, with the help of American intelligence officials. Italian investigators said they had told the Americans they had strong evidence that he was trying to build a terror recruitment network, possibly aimed for Iraq if the United States went forward with plans to topple Saddam Hussein.

On Feb. 17, 2003, Nasr disappeared.

When the Italians began investigating, they said, they were startled to find evidence that some of the CIA officers who had helped them investigate Nasr were involved in his abduction.

"We do feel quite betrayed that this operation was carried out in our city," a senior Italian investigator said. "We supplied them information about Abu Omar, and then they used that information against us, undermining an entire operation against his terrorist network."

He and other senior Italian officials in the police and prosecutor’s offices in Milan were angry enough to answer detailed questions about the case.

But they insisted on anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

"This whole investigation has been very difficult because we’ve been using the same methods we used against organized crime to trace the activities of people we considered to be our friends and colleagues," the senior Italian investigator said. "It has been quite a troubling affair."

The Italian warrants, requested by Milanese prosecutors after two years of investigations, accuse 13 people identified as CIA officers and operatives of illegally abducting Nasr from a Milan street and flying him to Egypt for questioning. The whereabouts of the 13 are unknown, but the charges are criminal. If convicted, they face a maximum penalty of 10 years and 8 months in prison.

The CIA has declined to comment, and officials at the U.S. Consulate in Milan and the U.S. Embassy in Rome have also declined to talk about the case.

The Italian police and prosecutors said the CIA’s top official at the U.S. Consulate in Milan, a man accused in the arrest warrant of coordinating Nasr’s abduction, had been in close contact with them as they pursued intensive investigations into Al Qaeda and other Islamic militant networks in Europe.

Italian investigators said they were surprised when they discovered that he had placed a cellphone call to one of their own police officers not long after Nasr disappeared, but made no mention of what had happened, they said.

The frustration expressed by the Italians echoes similar sentiments among some counterterrorism officials in other European countries.

Besides their objections to the American rendition policy, European counterterrorism officials also partly blame a lack of access to terrorism suspects and information held by the United States for their failure to convict a number of their own high-profile terrorism suspects.

"The American system is of little use to us," a senior Italian counterterrorism investigator said. "It’s a one-way street. We give them what we have, but we are given no useful information that can help us prosecute people."

Sharing access has become a sore point between American and European officials in high-profile terrorism cases in Europe, including that of Mounir el-Motassadeq, a suspected associate of several Sept. 11 hijackers. On Feb. 19, 2003, he was convicted in Germany on charges related to the attacks in 2001 - the only conviction thus far - but the case crumbled on appeal. He was released in April 2004. German officials blamed American officials for failing to provide evidence. He is being retried.

And the Bush administration has refused to allow Spanish officials to interview Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a central Qaeda suspect, in their case against two men on trial in Madrid on charges of helping to plan the attacks in 2001.

Some former American intelligence officials said in interviews that there might be political motivations behind the warrants. On Saturday, Armando Spataro, Milan’s deputy chief prosecutor who led the investigation of Nasr and the kidnapping inquiry, declined to comment on accusations of political bias.

An Italian judicial official said that Spataro, 56, was not a member of any political party. He faced accusations of a rightist bias when he led prosecutions of the Red Brigade terrorist organization in the late 1970s and 1980s. Two of his colleagues, the official said, were killed by the Red Brigades.

"I think people in Washington may not understand that in Italy a prosecutor does not choose what to investigate," the official said. "He has a legal obligation to investigate any crime."

Spataro, in a recent interview, expressed his disdain for the Americans’ use of rendition, though he denied that he was motivated by that when he asked a judge, Chiara Nobili, to sign the arrest warrants against the CIA officials.

"I feel the international community must struggle against terrorism and international terrorist groups in accordance with international laws and the rights of the defendant," he said. "Otherwise, we are giving victory to the terrorists."

Stephen Grey reported from Milan, and Don Van Natta Jr. from London.

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