Twists and turns of 'rendition' scandal rivet Italy

By Stephen Grey and Elisabetta Povoledo International Herald Tribune, The New York Times
July 9, 2006 (Read the full text).

MILAN The veteran spy made a mistake worthy of an amateur.
On June 1, a senior Italian intelligence official placed a call from a public telephone booth to a fellow spy to discuss an investigation into the alleged kidnapping by the CIA of a radical Egyptian cleric in 2003.
The Italian spies were also under investigation, for complicity in the abduction of the imam, who was seized on a Milan street and sent to his native Egypt to be interrogated and imprisoned.
In a country where police officers and spies tap more than 100,000 phone lines each year, Gustavo Pignero, the former chief of military counterespionage at the Italian intelligence agency, apparently ignored the obvious - that investigators were listening in.

Italy Arrests 2 in Kidnapping of Imam in '03

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By STEPHEN GREY and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO, New York Times
Published: July 6, 2006
MILAN, July 5 — Two officials with the Italian intelligence agency were arrested Wednesday in the kidnapping of a radical Egyptian cleric here in 2003. It was the first indication that Italian intelligence agents might have been directly involved in what prosecutors say was an American-led operation to detain and interrogate the imam.
Prosecutors also sought the arrest of three operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency and an employee of the American military airbase at Aviano, Italy. Last year, Italian prosecutors charged 22 other Americans, who were employed by or linked to the C.I.A., with involvement in the abduction of the cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr.
The government said it would "collaborate fully" with the investigation and expressed its "trust in the institutional loyalty" of the secret services. In the past, the government has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the kidnapping.