Cleric's story of abduction, torture, Letter opening salvo in CIA officers' trial
In a kidnapping case against 26 Americans and five Italian intelligence operatives, including the one-time CIA chief in Rome and Italy's former top spymaster, Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, will speak to the court through his letter, telling his story for the first time in his own words.
According to Abu Omar's written account, obtained by the Tribune, he was walking to his mosque in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, when he was stopped on the street by a man who identified himself as a police officer. The cleric wrote that he was pulled into a van, beaten and taken by plane to Egypt.
He described in detail how his Egyptian interrogators tried to get him to agree to become an informer, and he says he refused. What followed, according to his letter, was torture with electric shocks, beatings that caused him to lose the hearing in one ear, and sexual abuse.
For long periods of time, he said in his letter, he was kept in an underground cell "where you cannot distinguish between night and day and the cockroaches and rats and insects walk all over my body night and day."
Abu Omar has been locked away for nearly four years, most of it in Egypt's notorious Torah Prison, some 1,600 miles from the massive Tribunale in Milan, where a preliminary hearing in the case is to begin on Tuesday. Those proceedings could shine the first bright light on the U.S. practice of "rendering" terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation that allegedly is often accompanied by torture.
LinkHere
According to Abu Omar's written account, obtained by the Tribune, he was walking to his mosque in Milan on Feb. 17, 2003, when he was stopped on the street by a man who identified himself as a police officer. The cleric wrote that he was pulled into a van, beaten and taken by plane to Egypt.
He described in detail how his Egyptian interrogators tried to get him to agree to become an informer, and he says he refused. What followed, according to his letter, was torture with electric shocks, beatings that caused him to lose the hearing in one ear, and sexual abuse.
For long periods of time, he said in his letter, he was kept in an underground cell "where you cannot distinguish between night and day and the cockroaches and rats and insects walk all over my body night and day."
Abu Omar has been locked away for nearly four years, most of it in Egypt's notorious Torah Prison, some 1,600 miles from the massive Tribunale in Milan, where a preliminary hearing in the case is to begin on Tuesday. Those proceedings could shine the first bright light on the U.S. practice of "rendering" terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation that allegedly is often accompanied by torture.
LinkHere
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 10:12 PM
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