ITALY: In an account smuggled out of prison, a radical Muslim cleric has detailed how he was kidnapped by the CIA from Milan and flown to Cairo, where he was tortured for months with electric shocks and shackled to an iron rack known as "the Bride".
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, wrote an 11-page letter describing his 2003 abduction by the CIA and Italian secret service agents. He somehow got the document out of Egypt - where he remains in custody - and into the hands of Italian prosecutors who are investigating his disappearance. The Milan public prosecutor's office on Thursday confirmed the authenticity of the letter. Investigators said handwriting experts have verified that Nasr was the author.
The document has been submitted as evidence to defence lawyers representing 25 CIA officers, a US air force officer and nine Italian agents who have been charged with organising the kidnapping of Nasr, an Egyptian national, in February 2003.
A copy of the document was obtained by the Washington Post. Undated, it outlines how Nasr was seized as he was walking to a mosque in Milan, stuffed into a van and taken to Egypt in a covert operation involving spies from three countries. "I didn't understand anything about what was going on," Nasr wrote. "They began to punch me in the stomach and all over my body. They wrapped my entire head and face with wide tape, and cut holes over my nose and face so I could breathe."
On arrival in Egypt, he said, he was taken into a room by an Egyptian security official who told him that "two pashas" wanted to speak with him. "Only one spoke, an Egyptian," he wrote. "And all he said was: 'Do you want to collaborate with us?' " Nasr said the other "pasha" appeared to be an American. His captors offered a deal: they would allow him to return to Italy if he agreed to become an informant. Nasr said he refused. As a result he was interrogated and physically abused for the next 14 months in two Cairo prisons, he said.
Italian prosecutors charge that the CIA and the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi collaborated to kidnap Nasr, who was known for preaching radical sermons in Milan and railing against US policies in Afghanistan and the Middle East. According to prosecutors, the abduction thwarted a separate Italian police investigation into Nasr's activities and jeopardised a surveillance operation on other radicals in Milan.
Court papers allege that the kidnapping was orchestrated by the CIA's station chief in Rome and involved at least two dozen CIA operatives. Although the case has caused a furore in Italy, the US government has neither confirmed nor denied a role in Nasr's disappearance. Egyptian officials have also remained silent. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
Nasr's wife and his lawyer in Cairo have said the cleric is still imprisoned in Egypt, although he has been released under house arrest for brief periods.
Prosecutors in Milan are also investigating allegations that Italian spies offered to give Nasr $2.5 million if he would sign papers saying he had left Italy voluntarily and was not kidnapped.
In his letter, Nasr described how his health had badly deteriorated. He had lost hearing in one ear from repeated beatings, and his formerly pitch-black hair had turned white. He said he was kept in a cell with no toilet and no lights, where "roaches and rats walked across my body". He also described Egyptian interrogation practices, including how he would be strapped to an iron rack nicknamed "the Bride" and zapped with electric stun guns.
On other occasions, he wrote, he was tied to a wet mattress on the floor. While one interrogator sat on a wooden chair perched on his shoulders, another would flip a switch, sending jolts of electricity into the mattress coils.