The European Court of Human
Rights on Tuesday condemned Italy for preventing justice being
done in the 2003 US extraordinary rendition of a Muslim cleric
from Milan.
The Strasbourg court said Italy abused State secrecy norms
to protect Italian defendants, including Italy's then top two
spies, and was also wrong not to request the extradition of 22
CIA agents and a US Air Force colonel who were convicted.
It further condemned pardons for three top U.S. defendants
by successive Italian presidents Giorgio Napolitano and Sergio
Mattarella.
The ECHR ruled that Italy had infringed the rights of the
cleric, Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr.
"Having regard to all the evidence in the case, the Court
found it established that the Italian authorities were aware
that the applicant had been a victim of an extraordinary
rendition operation which had begun with his abduction in Italy
and had continued with his transfer abroad," read a statement by
the Court.
It said Italian officials cooperated in the operation which
saw Nasr transferred to Egypt, where he was held in secret for
several months.
It ruled Italy was guilty of several human rights
violations, including the failure to prevent Nasr from suffering
"torture and inhuman or degrading treatment" and the
infringement of his right to liberty and security.
The ECHR also said that Italy had abused the principle of
State secrecy in the case.
"In the present case the Court held that the legitimate
principle of "State secrecy" had clearly been applied by the
Italian executive in order to ensure that those responsible did
not have to answer for their actions," the Court said.
"The investigation and trial had not led to the punishment
of those responsible, who had therefore ultimately been granted
impunity".
In February 2014 Italy's supreme court acquitted the
former head and the No.2 of the Italian secret service agency
SISMI (now known as AISE), Nicolo' Pollari and Marco Mancini, as
well as three agents, for involvement in Nasr's rendition.
The Cassation Court said sentences could not be upheld due
to State secrecy.
Pollari and Mancini were respectively appealing a 10-year
and a nine-year sentence at a lower court for allowing the CIA
to commit "a grave violation of national sovereignty" when they
snatched Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, an Islamist suspected of
recruiting jihadi fighters.
Nasr, whose case led to the world's first judicial
examination of the controversial practice in the so-called war
on terror, got a jail term of six years for international
terrorism the previous December.
In September 2012, Italy's top court of appeals upheld the
convictions of 22 CIA agents and a former US air force officer,
commander of the Aviano air base, Joseph L. Romano, for the
abduction.
The Court of Cassation confirmed the seven-year sentences
for 22 of them and a nine-year term for former Milan station
chief Robert Seldon Lady.
Italian President Napolitano later pardoned Romano, while
last December President Sergio Mattarella pardoned Lady and
another CIA operative, Betnie Madero.
Despite calls from prosecutors, Italy never formally
requested the extradition of the US officers convicted.
In its Tuesday ruling, the ECHR found that Italy had not
fully pursued justice for Nasr "because of the fact that the
sentences imposed on the convicted US nationals had not been
enforced because of the refusal of the Italian authorities to
request their extradition".
As for Pollari, Mancini and the other Italian defendants,
Italy again effectively failed to give Nasr justice "because of
the fact those responsible had been granted impunity owing to
the application of State secrecy".
Reacting to the ruling, Milan Prosecutor Ferdinando
Pomarici voiced "personal satisfaction, but profound bitterness.
"We, who are the cradle of law, find ourselves brutally
slapped. It took the Strasbourg court to put us back in line and
say: kid, you don't do these things".
Claudio Fava, deputy chair of the parliamentary anti-mafia
commission, called on Premier Matteo Renzi to "urgently" report
to parliament on the ECHR ruling.
Nasr was snatched by a team of CIA operatives with the help
of SISMI and taken via Aviano to a NATO base in Ramstein,
Germany, en route to Cairo.
He emerged from an Egyptian prison four years later
claiming he had been tortured.
Italian courts have awarded him one million euros in
damages.
The case caused friction between Italy and the United
States.
Extraordinary rendition was first authorised by former
American president Bill Clinton in the 1990s and stepped up when
his successor George W. Bush declared war on terror after the
September 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda.
Successive Italian governments denied all knowledge of the
case and consistently ruled out the possibility of extradition.
The trial of Nasr claimed headlines worldwide and stoked
discussion of rendition, which was extended by President Barack
Obama in 2008 under the proviso that detainees' rights should be
respected.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
