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.
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