Abu Omar

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Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr on a CIA surveillance picture

Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan ( Arabic حسن مصطفى أسامة نصر) often called Imams Abu Omar (born March 18, 1963 in Alexandria , Egypt ) was Imam of a mosque in Milan . His case gained notoriety because he was kidnapped on February 17, 2003 in Milan in a clandestine operation by the CIA on the open street and abducted in a small plane via Germany to Egypt.

In 2009, a court in Milan sentenced 22 US citizens to five years in prison, one defendant was sentenced to eight years in prison and three Americans were acquitted on charges of diplomatic immunity.

Life

After being arrested in Egypt in 1993, he had lived in Italy since 1997, where he was recognized as a political refugee in 2001 after the Islamist organization Gamaa Islamija , of which he was a member, was banned by the Egyptian government.

His kidnapping plays a role in the debate about so-called extraordinary renditions (Eng. "Extraordinary extradition", in this context a euphemism ).

The abduction

The Chicago Tribune reported that Albanian intelligence officials said he was recruited by the CIA in Albania in 1995 and was the best informer on Islamic fundamentalists in Albanian exile, where he worked for an Islamic charity for four years. At noon on February 17, 2003, about a month before the start of the Iraq war , he was dragged into a car on the street in Milan, taken to the US military's Aviano Air Base , from there to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and finally to Egypt flown. According to Amnesty International , he was initially released after more than a year of imprisonment, but arrested again shortly afterwards in mid-2004 and was imprisoned for several years. On February 11, 2007, his lawyer, Montasser al-Zayat, said that Abu Omar was back with his family and that he was trying to testify against his kidnappers.

Abu Omar always declared himself innocent. He testified that the CIA had offered him $ 2 million and US citizenship if he would keep quiet about his story.

The Abu Omar case

Silvio Berlusconi , who was still Prime Minister of Italy at the time of the kidnapping , had repeatedly denied that his government was aware of these events. Also Nicolò Pollari between 2001 and 2006 Head of the Italian security service SISMI , always said that the Italian secret service had nothing of the CIA known operation. The investigating public prosecutor's office, however, learned through interrogations of the former vice-head of the SISMI, Marco Mancini, and several employees who were also arrested that the SISMI had actively supported the CIA. Italian media also reported that the secret service had bribed journalists in order to cover up the operation and discredit politicians and judges involved in the discovery. Renato Farina , editor-in-chief of the right-wing daily Libero , confessed to working with SISMI and being paid to do it. Among other things, a falsified dossier had been published in his newspaper, according to which Romano Prodi (at the time Berlusconi's opponent in the election as prime minister) had approved the illegal CIA flights in Europe as President of the EU Commission . Giuseppe D'Avanzo and Carlo Bonini, journalists with the La Repubblica newspaper who researched the abduction of Abu Omar, were spied on and wiretapped by the SISMI.

In Italy, there have been negotiations since June 2007 against 26 American kidnappers and 7 Italians, including the former head of the secret service; In July 2007, the Chief Prosecutor of Milan filed a formal extradition request to the USA against the 26 US citizens who are wanted by arrest warrant. Among those wanted are the alleged CIA agents Eric Robert Hume , Harry Kirk Elarbee and James Kovalesky .

The government of Italy (at that time Berlusconi III cabinet ; May 2008-November 2011 Berlusconi IV cabinet ) refused to forward the request to the United States. On the contrary, in October 2007 the Italian government informed a parliamentary investigative committee that “the possible contact between the American and Italian governments in this case would be protected by state secrecy”. In November 2009, the Milan court sentenced 23 CIA agents to long prison terms.

Since the flight from Italy to Germany was flown over Swiss airspace on the way to Cairo , the Federal Prosecutor's Office there is also investigating. The Swiss newspaper Blick published a list of wanted secret service employees . In 2005, the Ramstein public prosecutor's office in Zweibrücken investigated in Germany .

In addition, the special envoy of the European Parliament, Dick Marty , who examined the cooperation of European governments in the system of black sites , called the Abu Omar case in his final report "undoubtedly one of the most well-known and best-documented cases of 'extraordinary rendition'".

On February 12, 2013, an appeals court in Milan sentenced former SISMI director Nicolò Pollari to 10 years in prison and awarded Abu Omar and his wife € 1 million in damages. Pollari's deputy Marco Mancini was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment, the head of the CIA base in Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment in absentia , and two other CIA employees also to imprisonment. Pollari announced that he would appeal this judgment to the Corte Suprema di Cassazione .

CIA agent Robert Seldon Lady, wanted by the Italian judiciary, was arrested in Panama in July 2013 but not extradited.

At the Black Hat 2013 hacker conference in Las Vegas, NBC News journalist Matthew Cole reported how the metadata of the cell phone connection (i.e. not the content of the conversation, but information about who was calling whom for how long) revealed the CIA operation and dozens of agents exposed. Since around May 2013 the recording of metadata has been well known in many countries thanks to the revelations made by Edward Snowden .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chicago Tribune: Abducted imam aided CIA ally , July 3, 2005
  2. ↑ Die Zeit: Departure for the torture chamber , December 1, 2005
  3. ↑ BBC News: Egypt releases 'rendition' cleric , February 12, 2007
  4. ↑ Anna Maldini: Harsh verdict does not clarify - In the process of CIA-controlled kidnapping: Ten years in prison for Italy's former head of military intelligence , February 14, 2013
  5. ↑ La Repubblicà: Farina, confessione in prima pagina , July 8, 2006
  6. ^ Spiegel Online International: CIA Kidnappers Accused by Italian Court , June 8, 2007
  7. ↑ a b Schweizer Blick: Die Liste , February 1, 2007
  8. ↑ Human rights in EU member states (press release by Human Rights Watch )
  9. ↑ High prison sentences for CIA kidnapping of an imam requested in Milan ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) - Milan public prosecutor requests twelve years imprisonment for the ex-director of the Italian secret service SISMI, Nicolo Pollari. October 28, 2010
  10. ↑ US bases in Germany: hub for torture flights? - Monitor (WDR), July 21, 2005; Abduction: German judiciary investigates US secret service - SpOn, Nov. 12, 2005
  11. ↑ D.Marty (report): Alleged secret detentions in Council of Europe member states Information Memorandum II , (pdf, p. 8; 260 kB)
  12. ^ Ex-chief of military intelligence sentenced to prison sentence , Süddeutsche , February 12, 2013
  13. ↑ Ex-CIA cadre on the way home again . Small interlude in Panama. The former head of the CIA headquarters in Milan was arrested in Panama yesterday. The Italian judiciary has been demanding an extradition of Robert Seldon Lady since 2009. But now, according to US authorities, he is on his way to the USA again. In: SRF . 19th July 2013.
  14. ↑ www.blackhat.com
  15. ^ Ole Reissmann: Telephone surveillance: Cell phone data reveal illegal CIA operation . Online at spiegel.de from August 2, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Omar, Abu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hassan, Osama Nasr Mostafa (real name); Omar, Imams Abu
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Egyptian imam of a mosque in Milan
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Alexandria , Egypt