Super:
Milan, Midday 17^th February, 2003

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Re-enactment of abduction. Super: Re-enactment

CAFAGNA:  It was a normal Monday for radical Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, better known as Abu Omar.

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He was walking to midday prayers at his local mosque when he noticed a white van.

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When he passed the gardens at Via Guerzoni, an Italian identifying himself as a police officer approached asking to see his identification papers.

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CAFAGNA: Omar’s recollection was of being grabbed by two men, now known to be CIA operatives.  They threw him into the back of their van, placed a bag over his head and beat him as the vehicle sped off.  As Abu Omar lay semi-conscious on the van floor, feet and hands shackled with tape and covered with a blanket, he wasn’t to know he’d not see Italy again for years.

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CIA Photo of Abu Omar

This is the CIA’s surveillance image of Abu Omar. According to Italian prosecutors he was kidnapped by the CIA in a practice known as extraordinary rendition,  where suspected terrorists are abducted and flown to a country where torture is commonplace to extract information -- in Omar’s case it was Egypt.

CLAUDIO FAVA:  We’ve violated

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Fava

international conventions, we’ve violated the human rights of the defendant and we’ve seriously violated the sovereignty of this country.

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Spataro. Super:
Armando Spartaro
Milan Special Prosecutor

ARMANDO SPATARO: It’s also a mistake to say we have a war against terrorism but we refuse to apply the Geneva Convention.

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Ext. Abu Omar’s home

CAFAGNA: This was Abu Omar’s home in Milan. It’s less than a kilometre from the local mosque.  The details of what happened on that day on his way to the mosque has only emerged because of two things. An extraordinary document written by Omar

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Statuary

from a prison cell in Cairo, and the tireless efforts of one of Italy’s top terrorism crime fighters -- his name is Armando Spataro.

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Spataro in courtroom

He’s one of Italy’s most senior prosecutors who made his name successfully combating political corruption and the country’s infamous home grown terrorists, the Red Brigades.

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People walking on streets

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CAFAGNA: At the time of the kidnapping by the CIA, Spataro and a team of investigators were monitoring Abu Omar’s  movements and about to lay terrorism charges against him. They had no idea the CIA was about to snatch him from under their noses.

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Spataro. Super:
Armando Spartaro
Milan Special Prosecutor

SPATARO:  Just after his kidnapping we closed the investigation because of course the kidnapping was a serious damage for our investigation.

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CAFAGNA:  From here, Omar was driven to the U.S. military airbase at Aviano in northern Italy and flown to Egypt via Germany.

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Cairo

He’d spent more than a year in a Cairo prison before investigators in Italy established his whereabouts and that was only by tapping his wife’s phone in Milan.

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Ext. Abu Omar’s home

Abdelhamid Shaari, President of the Milan Islamic Institute explains.

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Shaari

SHAARI: Omar rang from Egypt and told his story that he was kidnapped from here, taken to an American base, then to Egypt by air.  In Egypt he was tortured and abused.  They had released him but after that phone call they re-arrested him and put him back in jail.

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Ext. Cairo jail

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CAFAGNA: Back in his Cairo prison Abu Omar wrote a letter. It was smuggled from his cell and delivered to the Milan prosecutors office.

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Drawings

It reads like a last testament and gives graphic detail of what Omar says he suffered at the hands of Egyptian interrogators.

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OMAR V/O: “I write this from inside my tomb… The cell is two by one and half metres with no window and no way of telling night from day.

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I was called number 27, stripped naked, bound and blind-folded, beaten and tortured with an electric prod.

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They have beaten me so hard I have lost my hearing. I have endured sexual violence, a torture I will never forget.

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Spataro

CAFAGNA: Was he tortured?

SPATARO: I prefer to speak about this specific news before the judge during the trial.

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Spataro in courtroom

CAFAGNA: What he’s hoping to do is a world first. To bring to trial the 26 CIA agents he’s named as being involved in the illegal kidnapping of Abu Omar. 

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CIA photo of Abu Omar

The CIA was assisted in its Italian job by five agents from the local secret service known as SISMI.

SPATARO: It’s a mistake to think that this is a trial against one or two secret service.

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Spataro. Super:
Armando Spartaro
Milan Special Prosecutor

This is a trial against 31 defendants who were identified as responsible of a serious crime because the kidnapping is a serious crime, not only against the liberty and dignity of the people but also against the Italian sovereignty.

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Re-enactment of abduction. Super: Re-enactment

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CAFAGNA: According to Spataro the use of extraordinary rendition by the United States as a tool in its so-called war against terrorism, is a mistake that adds fuel to the fight.

SPATARO: We have also to think

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Spataro

that if we use this instrument, this illegal instrument, this anti-democratic instrument, we give to the terrorists other reasons to be terrorists.

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Spying shots in car

CAFAGNA: According to embarrassing evidence gathered by Milan’s prosecuting team, the CIA agents were careless. They left behind a trail of evidence -- maps, credit cards. They even used their frequent flyer numbers and they enjoyed the high life during their mission.

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Ext. Principe di Savoia Hotel

This is one of Milan’s exclusive five star hotels.  The Principe di Savoia. In the weeks leading up to the abduction of Abu Omar this is where the CIA agents stayed. Claudio Fava is

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Cafagna with Fava

a member of the European Parliament and an expert on renditions.

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Fava

FAVA: They behaved like spies out of a B-grade movie.  They paid their accounts with company cards with sequential serial numbers. They rented cars with their own driver’s licence with a Virginian stamp, diplomatic passports with sequential serial numbers. They left a huge trail, and that shows one thing, they were certain they were acting with absolute impunity.

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CAFAGNA: What does it mean when the CIA behaves in such a manner?

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FAVA:  It means they know they have political protection.

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Fava in office

CAFAGNA: Claudio Fava’s report accuses many European countries, including Italy, of tacit approval of the U.S. secret rendition program. He believes

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 the CIA  is now creating a network of  what he calls ‘black sites’ in Africa where so-called high-value detainees can be sent without scrutiny.

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FAVA: Guantanamo is a place where people are relatively fortunate to go, to because they have a first name and a surname and a nationality. 

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But outside Guantanamo there are hundreds of detainees who don’t have a nationality.  They’ve been kidnapped and sent to Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Romania and Poland.  We don’t even know if many of them are alive.

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Via Jenner. Muslims pray

Call to prayer

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CAFAGNA:  Milan has a strong and growing Islamic community numbering more than 80,000.  This particular mosque in Via Jenner has a reputation for harbouring radical extremists.

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Shaari

SHAARI:  Our phones are bugged, our faxes and emails. We’re being watched everywhere -- our houses,  our cars.  Then there are all the different spies from, Egypt, Syria, Morocco. These people are praying amongst us with long beards and all the rest. I’m happy about this because it shows we have nothing to hide.

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Ext. Jenner Mosque

CAFAGNA: The Jenner mosque is where Abu Omar drew attention to himself by regularly delivering his anti-American homily. He’s accused by Milan’s prosecutors of enlisting extremists and sending them off to training.

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Ext. Justice centre

Italy’s finest silks gathered at Milan’s justice centre for protracted

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Courtroom

legal argument over whether the CIA and Italian SISMI spies should be tried over the OMAR kidnapping. None of the defendants are in court -- the U.S. is refusing to extradite the CIA agents, but Italian law allows them to be tried in absentia.

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Cafagna walks with Meroni

Lawyer for six of the CIA accused, Guido Meroni, hasn’t met his clients. He hasn’t even spoken to them.  He says the trial should fail solely on the issue of identity -- spies don’t use their true names.

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Meroni

MERONI:  Obviously they have used cover names.  I doubt very much the names that have emerged are their real names.

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Sunset

CAFAGNA: Whether the trial succeeds or not, it has caused severe embarrassment for the Bush administration and the centre-left Prodi government. Rome is keen to demonstrate it’s a loyal ally.

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Bridge at night

A key question says government senator Massimo Brutti is whether the former Berlusconi government approved the rendition.

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BRUTTI:  Whether the government knew or not, I think this will need to be established.

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Brutti on phone in office

Therefore I hope the trial can go ahead without impediment so everyone accepts responsibility.

CAFAGNA:   Do you have suspicions?

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Brutti

BRUTTI:  Our duty is not to follow our suspicions.  Each of us has our ideas but suspicions are not corroborated by facts, they remain suspicions.

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Fava

FAVA:  It’s obvious now there was a cover-up of this operation.  The old government and the new government have chosen to protect the SISMI hierarchy and this government has decided to use the secrecy act as a truncheon to attack this trial and to avoid Nicolo Pollari and other secret service agents  being tried.  We think this is very serious.

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Milan. People/ Buildings

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CAFAGNA: The Milanese like to think of themselves as better informed than most Italians.  They’ve closely followed progress of the case, mainly because it’s happening in their city.

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For the remainder in Italy there’s scant interest in the rendition trial, partly due to the fact that so far the scandal hasn’t claimed any senior government scalp. The highest ranking Italian official to be implicated by Milan prosecutors

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Photo. Pollari

is this man, Nicolo Pollari, the former head of the Italian spy-agency SISMI. He’s said nothing publicly and through his lawyer, Franco Coppi, he’s maintaining he knew nothing.

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Coppi

COPPI:  He was totally unaware of this kidnapping.  It happened without his knowledge and therefore he was unable to intervene. There were no orders to do this. If there had been such orders, General Pollari would have refused to carry them out.

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Shots of people, windows, fast surveillance

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CAFAGNA: For Italy’s secret service the consequences of the Omar rendition have been brutal.  Its hierarchy has been replaced and it’s set for major reform. But observers of Euro/Atlantic relations believe the removal of an entire network of CIA spies from Italy will have dire effects on Europe’s intelligence community.

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Fabrizio Luciolli: Even during the Cold War in the most critical times we were kicking out one or two agents, not 26. We have to re-establish,

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Luciolli. Super:
Fabrizio Luciolli
Atlantic Treaty Association

with completely new people and new co-operation. And so what was established over years and years of co-operation was absolutely damaged.

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Abu Omar at press conference

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CAFAGNA: Abu Omar has been released from his Cairo prison. His attempts to return to Italy have been barred by the Egyptian Government.

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Ext. Court

Even if Omar did return to Italy, he’d be immediately arrested and charged with terrorism offences.

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Scambia in court

His lawyer Carmelo Scambia is taking the moral high ground.

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Scambia outside court

SCAMBIA: I had hoped that in this court today representatives of the Italian state would have been present to defend these rights.

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CAFAGNA:  So you’re saying it’s a global issue, not just for Italy?

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SCAMBIA: Of course, it’s an issue that concerns the dignity of man and I’m ashamed that this happened in a civilised Europe, civilised Italy and civilised Milan. Understand?

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Luciolli. Super:
Fabrizio Luciolli
Atlantic Treaty Association

CAFAGNA:  Do you think the extraordinary rendition program should continue?

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Fabrizio Luciolli: Why not? If this is a program that is going to show its effectiveness, if this is a program that is complying with some basic rules, it can continue. 

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Tram in Milan

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CAFAGNA:  For the moment the prosecution of American and Italian spies is in abeyance until a higher Italian court decides whether this case puts at risk secrets of state.

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Postscript:  Since we taped that story the U.S. Government has promised the CIA won’t engage in cruel and inhumane treatment while interrogating terrorism suspects. Although there’s no sign of any change in Egyptian jails.

Reporter:   Josephine Cafagna 

Camera: Louie Eroglu  ACS

              Michael Cox 

Editor: Steven Baras-Miller