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CIA Abducts Muslim, Spends $100,000 in Luxury Hotels
By Kurt Nimmo
06/25/05
The Italian dailies Corriere della Sera and Il Giorno are
reporting the issuance of arrest warrants for “13 American
intelligence operatives, charging that they kidnapped a radical
Islamic cleric as he walked to a mosque here two years ago, held
him hostage at two U.S. military bases and then covertly flew him
to Cairo. He later said he was tortured by Egyptian security
police,” according to the Washington
Post. “The CIA and the U.S. Embassy in Rome declined to
comment Friday,” although Italian court documents indicate
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was indeed
abducted. “Nasr was a longtime surveillance target of Italian
counterterrorism police, who have made no secret of their
frustration over how he was forcibly taken out of the country
without their knowledge…. Nasr was kidnapped just after noon by
eight U.S. operatives as he was walking from his house to a nearby
mosque to pray. He was bundled into a van and taken to Aviano Air
Base, a joint Italian-U.S. military installation. Hours later, he
was put on a Learjet to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he was
transferred to another airplane, which took him to Cairo, the
documents show.”
The somnolent American taxpayer should be proud, even though
the CIA operatives “spent more than $100,000 to stay in luxury
hotels in Milan, Florence and Venice before and after Nasr’s
disappearance.” Of course, we shouldn’t expect the CIA to stay
in the Italian version of the Red Roof Inn. Violating
international law (international conventions bar sending prisoners
to another nation unless there are strong assurances of humane
treatment, according to Nat
Hentoff) and sneaking around behind the back of our supposed
allies is hard and thankless work and CIA operatives deserve every
perk they can get.
“[In] the post-9-11 world, the United States must make sure
we protect our people and our friends from attack… One way to do
so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of
origin with the promise that they won’t be tortured. That’s
the promise we receive. This country does not believe in
torture,” our fearless fibber said on March 16. Naturally, once
in Cairo, Mr. Nasr was kindly and politely interviewed in an
air-conditioned office and offered gourmet coffee and Asseeda.
Actually, as Hentoff points out, Nasr is lucky he was not
“renditioned” to Uzbekistan, the Bush friendly country where
political opponents are boiled to death by Uzbekistan’s security
service, the SNB (see US
looks away as new ally tortures Islamists, the Guardian, May
26, 2003). Here’s how an “unnamed U.S. government official”
characterized Bush’s relationship with Uzbekistan: “Sometimes
you get married, sometimes you get a temporary restraining
order,” according to Frida
Berrigan, writing for Common Dreams. Sometimes, as well, you
boil alive a guest or two who stand up at the wedding and object.
I guess you can call it “forever holding your peace.”
As for the CIA’s demurral in the Nasr case, there is plenty
of evidence it has organized and now consistently operates a
kidnapping ring. “Newsweek has obtained previously unpublished
flight plans indicating the agency has been operating a Boeing 737
as part of a top-secret global charter servicing clandestine
interrogation facilities used in the war on terror,” the magazine
reported on February 28. In other words, there’s a good chance
the Italians are on to something.
A review of the names listed in the court documents suggests
that most of the people were operating under cover names.
Attempts by The Washington Post to locate individuals named in
the warrants were unsuccessful. The majority of the people named
have no listed residence, workplace, working telephone or
corporate history, according to a review of public records.
Moreover, half of the U.S. phone numbers that the operatives
listed when checking into Italian hotels had been disconnected
when called on Friday. Two numbers were answered by recordings
for companies with names that are unregistered. A third number
was answered by an answering service for a company described as
a foreign trade service. Phone messages left by The Post with
all three companies were not returned.
Two of the individuals had listed their addresses as boxes at
the same post office in Dunn Loring, Va., that is used by a man
who is listed as an officer of Premier Executive Transport
Services, a company that owns two planes used by the CIA for
renditions. The man’s name also appears to be a cover.
Phantom companies and fake names are a CIA modus operandi. For
instance, as the Washington Post reported last December, Premier
Executive Transport Services Inc., another CIA front company used
for “renditions,” is the work horse of Bush’s torture and
sexual humiliation gulag. “According to former CIA operatives
experienced in using ‘proprietary,’ or front, companies, the
CIA likely used, or intended to use, some of the 325 names to hide
other activities, the nature of which could not be learned,”
writes Dana Priest. “The former operatives also noted that the
agency devotes more effort to producing cover identities for its
operatives in the field, which are supposed to stand up under
scrutiny, than to hiding its ownership of a plane.”
In February, a former FBI agent cited by the New Yorker said
the CIA’s “rendition” of suspected terrorists has spiraled
“out of control,” creating a “nightmare,” according to
Michael Scheuer, a one-time CIA agent, quoted by Agence
France Presse. The New Yorker report reveals that suspects in
Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East “have been abducted by
hooded or masked American agents” and then sometimes forced onto
a white Gulfstream V jet. “The jet ‘has been registered to a
series of dummy American corporations … (and) has clearance to
land at US military bases,’ the report said. Its tailmark has
recently been changed from the code N379P to N8068V,” explains
Agence France Presse. “Coleman [the FBI agent] told The New
Yorker that torture ‘has become bureaucratized,’ by the Bush
administration, and that the practice of renditions is ‘out of
control.’”
The Premier Executive Transport Services Gulfstream bearing the
tail number N379P has been spotted in Afghanistan, Indonesia,
Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and
Uzbekistan (where they parboil people), according to another Agence
France Presse report, citing the Washington Post. As well,
according to the Post, “airport officials and amateur plane
spotters, some using binoculars, have logged multiple sightings of
N379P at several US military airports and fueling stations.”
So it appears Milan prosecutor Manlio Claudio Minale has a
robust case against the CIA (additional background info is
available from similar cases in Germany and Sweden). However, it
remains to be seen if the Italians will successfully prosecute the
CIA or their case will fizzle out, as legal maneuvers against the
spook agency often do. Even if the Italians fail, however, the
details they unearth are more grist for the ongoing case to be
made against Bush and his cronies, who believe they are above
international law. It will also provide ammo in the struggle
against right-wingers who accuse opponents of Bush’s worldwide
gulag of inventing tall stories in an effort to undermine the U.S.
“war” against terrorism and slander the president.
Visit Kurt's Blog at http://www.kurtnimmo.com/blog/
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