Italian visit:President Bush arrived in Italy last night for meetings today in Rome with Pope Benedict XVI and Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, meetings that will take place against the backdrop of anti-Bush and anti-US protest marches.
With less than perfect timing, the US president arrived in Italy on the opening day of a trial in Milan in which 26 CIA agents stand accused of the kidnapping and subsequent "extraordinary rendition" of Egyptian imam Abu Omar in February 2003.
Italian prosecutors allege that the 26 CIA agents and seven other men, including Gen Nicolo Pollari, former head of Italy's military intelligence service, SISMI, were responsible for the February 17th, 2003, kidnapping of Abu Omar. The imam was subsequently transferred to the US base of Aviano in northern Italy, from where he was flown via Germany to Egypt where he was reportedly tortured.
Only one of the 33 defendants, senior SISMI officer Luciano Di Gregorio, was in court yesterday. The US government has long since made clear that it would not extradite the wanted agents while the centre-left Italian government of Romano Prodi has also said that it will not seek their extradition.
Furthermore, the Italian government, perhaps concerned by the trial's diplomatic implications and ramifications, has appealed to Italy's constitutional court, arguing that Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro violated state secrecy laws by tapping the phones of SISMI agents.
The constitutional court, which is not due to rule on this issue until September, could force the charges to be dropped. Nicola Maddia, defence lawyer for Gen Pollari, yesterday indicated that he will ask for a suspension of the trial until such time as the constitutional court has issued its ruling.
"Extraordinary rendition" has been one of the most controversial tactics used by the US in the so-called "war on terror" declared after the September 11th, 2001 attacks in the US. Abu Omar (44), whose full name is Nasr Osama Mustafa Hassan, attracted the attention of secret service operatives because of his activities as a recruitment agent.
He had first come to Italy via Afghanistan and Albania in 1997. Bugs placed by Italian police in the Milan mosques of Via Quaranta and Viale Jenner soon revealed the imam to be an Islamic radical who called on "the youth" to offer themselves up as suicide bombers in various "jihads".
The Italian secret service, the DIGOS, allegedly discovered links not only between Abu Omar and al-Qaeda but also between him and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Given that Abu Omar was under close surveillance, it was not difficult for the DIGOS to trace no fewer than 17 mobile phones being used repeatedly during a five-minute period in and around the imam's Milan home on the day of his disappearance.
Those phones were traced to some of the CIA agents who had checked into the Hilton, Sheraton, Gallia and Principe di Savoia hotels in Milan in the week of Abu Omar's disappearance.
In the course of the investigation, Italian investigators collected the names (presumably false), credit cards, US addresses, passport numbers and photos of many of the agents. Suspicion that Abu Omar might have been kidnapped in the course of an "extraordinary rendition" operation was fuelled by the testimony of a woman witness who was in Via Guerzoni on the day of his disappearance. As she came walking out of a nearby park, she allegedly saw two men in Italian police uniforms spray something in Abu Omar's face and then bundle him into the back of a van.