U.S. Allies Resisting CIA's Secretive Role in Deporting Terror Suspects

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U.S. allies have begun to resist Washington's secretive role in spiriting away terror suspects: Italy is investigating the disappearance of one accused militant as a kidnapping, Sweden wrote rules to assert its authority over outside agents and Canada is holding hearings after one of its citizens was sent to Syria.

At least two of the cases bear the hallmarks of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program - stepped up after Sept. 11 - in which the Bush administration has transferred dozens of suspects to third countries without court approval, subjecting them to possible torture.

In Italy, an Egyptian-born imam identified as Abu Omar had already drawn the attention of Italian anti-terrorism officials when he vanished off the streets of Milan two years ago, reportedly bundled into a van and flown back to Egypt from a joint U.S.-Italian air base. "The prosecution is certain it was a kidnapping," prosecutor Armando Spataro told The Associated Press last week. He would not say who is suspected, citing judicial secrecy as the investigation is still under way.

Italian news reports say the CIA was believed to have played a role in the disappearance, and opposition politicians have demanded explanations from the government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a close ally of President Bush.
Citing conversations recorded by Italian anti-terrorism officials in a wiretap, the Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica newspapers reported that Omar, 42, called his wife and friends in Milan after his release last year. He recounted how he had been seized by Italian and American agents and taken to a secret prison in Egypt, where he was tortured with electric shocks. Italian officials say he is now living in Egypt, although Italian newspaper accounts suggested he was returned to custody in Egypt shortly after his release.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBAB4EI5AE.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050619/ap_on_re_eu/terror_spirited_away_1

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. Seems like the OSP would be involved in this activity, not the CIA.

[Binka]

2. Don't forget the Boston Red Sox Corporate Jet... tail number N85VM

Published on Sunday, March 20, 2005 by the Knight-Ridder Tribune Newspapers
Jet's Travels Cloaked in Mystery
by John Crewdson and Tom Hundley

(KRT) - Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team's championship season.
But what was the very same Gulfstream - owned by one of the Red Sox's partners, but presumably without the team's logo on its fuselage - doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?

Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport.

Omar, whose given name is Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, was imprisoned by the Egyptians and, he claims, brutally tortured. The public prosecutor in Milan, Armando Spataro, who is investigating Omar's apparent kidnapping, expects to file charges within a few days, according to an Italian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Spataro made headlines last month when, attempting to identify the plane that transported Omar from Italy to Egypt, he served a warrant on the Italian commander of the air base at Aviano, Italy, which is home to the U.S. Air Force's 31st Fighter Wing.

Spataro declines to say whether the Gulfstream that landed in Cairo, which bore the tail number N85VM, departed from Aviano around the time of Omar's disappearance.

But Federal Aviation Administration records obtained by the Chicago Tribune show that Gulfstream N85VM has been many places around the world that the Red Sox have almost certainly never gone...

oh BTW...

Knight-Ridder Tribune Newspapers

Between June 2002 and January of this year, the Gulfstream made 51 visits to Guantanamo, the plane recorded 82 visits to Washington's Dulles International Airport as well as landings at Andrews Air Force Base outside the capital and the U.S. air bases at Ramstein and Rhein-Main in Germany.

The plane's flight log also shows visits to Afghanistan, Morocco, Dubai, Jordan, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic.

Egypt, Afghanistan, Jordan and Morocco are among the countries to which the United States is known to have "rendered" terrorism suspects. ...