Mattarella pardons Seldon Lady, Medero

(ANSA) - Rome, December 23 - President Sergio Mattarella on Wednesday pardoned two CIA operatives who abducted a Muslim cleric from Milan in 2003 under the U.S. extraordinary rendition program. Bernie Medero and former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady were convicted and sentenced to prison in absentia along with 21 others in the abduction from Italy of Egyptian national Hassan Mustafa Omar 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 of extraordinary rendition in the so-called war on terror, got a prison term of six years for international terrorism in December 2013.
    In September 2012, Italy's Supreme Court upheld the convictions of 22 CIA agents and a former US air force officer, Joseph L. Romano, for the abduction.
    Italian President Giorgio Napolitano later pardoned Romano.
    Also on Wednesday, Mattarella pardoned Massimo Romani, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison on drug possession charges in Thailand in 2008.
    Romani began serving his term in a Thai prison, and was extradited to prison in Italy in August 2014.