Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan ( ar. حسن مصطفى أسامة نصر ) called Abu Omar, Imam Abu Omar also often called ( born March 18, 1963 in Alexandria, Egypt) was imam of a mosque in Milan. His case gained notoriety because he was kidnapped on 17 February 2003 in Milan in a clandestine operation by the CIA on the street and taken with a small plane over Germany to Egypt.
In 2009, a court in Milan 22 U.S. citizen to five years in prison convict, a defendant was to eight years in prison, three Americans were acquitted by referring to diplomatic immunity.
Life
After arrest in 1993 in Egypt, he had lived since 1997 in Italy, where he was recognized in 2001 as a political refugee after the Islamic organization al - Gama'a al - Islamiyya, which he belonged, had been banned by the Egyptian government.
His abduction plays a role in the debate over so-called Extraordinary renditions (Eng. " extraordinary rendition ", in this context, a euphemism ).
The Abduction
The Chicago Tribune reported, according to the Albanian intelligence officials, he was recruited in 1995 by the CIA in Albania and was the best informant about Islamic fundamentalists in the Albanian exile, where he worked for four years for an Islamic charity. On 17 February 2003, about a month before the start of the Iraq war, he base of the U.S. military was noon dragged into a car in Milan on the open road, the Air Force base at Aviano Air brought from there to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and finally to Egypt flown. According to Amnesty International, he was initially released after more than a year of captivity, shortly after mid-2004 but was arrested again and sat for several years in prison. On February 11, 2007, his lawyer Montasser al -Zayat, Abu Omar told was reunited with his family and wanted to testify in the trial of his captors.
Abu Omar said always innocent. He testified that the CIA have two million dollars and U.S. citizenship offered to him if he would keep quiet about its history.
The case of Abu Omar
Silvio Berlusconi, at the time of the kidnapping yet Prime Minister of Italy, had repeatedly denied that his government was aware of these events. Also Nicolò Pollari, from 2001 to 2006 head of the Italian security service Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare, always said that the Italian intelligence had known nothing of the CIA operation. The prosecutor's office has, however, learned from interrogations of former Vice - head of SISMI, Marco Mancini, and also arrested several employees that SISMI had the CIA actively assist. Next Italian media reported that the Secret Service had bribed journalists to cover the operation and politicians and judges involved in the discovery to discredit. Renato Farina, chief editor of the daily newspaper Libero right, confessed to having cooperated with the SISMI and to have been paid for it. In his paper, among others, a fake dossier was published, according to Romano Prodi had (at this time Berlusconi's rival candidate in the election for Prime Minister ) approved as President of the EU Commission, the illegal CIA flights in Europe. Giuseppe D' Avanzo and Carlo Bonini, journalists of the newspaper La Repubblica that researched about the kidnapping of Abu Omar, were spied on and played by SISMI.
In Italy, against 26 American captors as well as against seven Italians, including the former head of the secret service, negotiating since June 2007; the chief prosecutor of Milan presented in July 2007 a formal extradition request against the 26 U.S. citizens who are sought on arrest warrants, to the United States. Under the wanted are the alleged CIA agent Eric Robert Hume, Harry Kirk and James Elarbee Kovalesky.
The Government of Italy (then Cabinet Berlusconi III, May 2008 - November 2011 Cabinet Berlusconi IV) refused to forward the request to the United States. The Italian Government has notified the contrary in October 2007, a parliamentary investigation committee, " that the possible contact between the American and Italian government would be protected in this case by state secrecy".
In November 2009, the Court in Milan sentenced 23 CIA agents to long prison terms.
Since flew over on the way to Cairo Swiss airspace during the flight from Italy to Germany, also determines the local federal prosecutor. A list of the required intelligence officials released the Swiss newspaper Blick. In Germany in 2005 identified the person responsible for Ramstein prosecutor Zweibrücken.
Furthermore, called the Special Representative of the European Parliament Dick Marty, who investigated the cooperation of European governments in the system of Black sites, the case of Abu Omar in its final report " undoubtedly one of the best known and best documented cases of, extraordinary rendition ' ( extraordinary rendition ) ".
On 12 February 2013 the Court of Appeal in Milan condemned the SISMI director Nicolò Pollari former to 10 years in prison and said Abu Omar and his wife 1 million euros in damages to. Pollari's deputy Marco Mancini was sentenced to 9 years in prison, the director of the CIA base in Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, in absentia to seven years in prison, two more CIA employees also to imprisonment. Pollari announced to appeal against that judgment before the Court of Cassation appeal.
The sought by the Italian courts CIA agent Robert Seldon Lady was arrested in July 2013 in Panama, but not delivered.
On the hacker conference Black Hat 2013 in Las Vegas told the NBC news journalist Matthew Cole as the metadata of the mobile connection (ie not Gespärchsinhalte, but information about who, when, whom and how long rang ) the CIA operation betrayed and dozens of agents unmasked. Since around May 2013, the recording of metadata is well known in many countries thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden.