Ex-Employee of C.I.A. Held in Abduction
By ELISABETH MALKIN
The arrest was confirmed Thursday by
diplomatic officials in Italy, who said that the agent, Robert Seldon
Lady, was detained on the border between Costa Rica and Panama, after
Panama acted on a request by Interpol for his arrest. Panamanian and
American officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The 2003 abduction of the Egyptian-born
cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was
emblematic in the debate over the American intelligence practice of “extraordinary rendition,”
in which people suspected of being Islamic terrorists were abducted and
then turned over for questioning in other countries where torture is
often common.
The Obama administration did not end the
practice, began under the Clinton administration in the 1990s and
accelerated under the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, although
it placed conditions on it intended to prevent detainees from being
subject to torture. Mr. Nasr’s abductors flew him first to Germany and
then to Egypt, where he vanished. He was eventually released after four
years and said that he had been tortured.
Mr. Lady was the C.I.A. station chief in Milan
when the abduction occurred. In 2009, a Milan judge convicted Mr. Lady
and 22 other American intelligence officials in absentia of the
kidnapping.
The convictions were the first in an
extraordinary rendition case. Three other former C.I.A. agents,
including the former Rome station chief at the time of the abduction,
were convicted in February. The same month, the court convicted five
former Italian intelligence officials, including Nicolò Pollari, Italy’s
former military intelligence chief, who was sentenced to 10 years in
prison for the abduction.
Mr. Lady, 59, was arrested on an international
warrant issued by Italy last December, after the highest appeals court
confirmed his nine-year sentence. He had disappeared from Italy shortly
after the investigation began.
It was unclear whether Italy would request Mr.
Lady’s extradition, since it has no extradition treaty with Panama.
Panama could choose to send Mr. Lady to Italy, officials in Italy said.
An Italian Justice Ministry spokesman could not be reached for comment. A
few months before his 2009 conviction, Mr. Lady told the Italian
newspaper Il Giornale: “Of course it was an illegal operation. But
that’s our job. We’re at war against terrorism.”
No comments:
Post a Comment