BRDO PRI KRANJU: Italy s foreign minister said Monday he did not expect ties with the US to suffer because of the conviction of 23 CIA agents for the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian cleric.
I don t think there will be any problem due to the verdict, Franco Frattini said on the sidelines of a meeting with Slovenia s Foreign Minister Samuel Zbogar at Brdo pri Kranju, near Ljubljana.
The decision was taken by an Italian court and not by the Italian government and, as you well know, the Italian government was of a different opinion, he added.
An Italian judge in Milan last week convicted 23 US and two Italian secret agents for snatching Egyptian cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan, an imam better known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street.
The radical Islamist opposition figure, who had political asylum in Italy, was allegedly taken to the Aviano Air Base, a US military installation in northeastern Italy, then flown to the US base in Ramstein, Germany, and on to Cairo, where he says he was tortured.
His abduction was part of the extraordinary rendition program set up by the administration of then-president George W. Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The US State Department has expressed its disappointment over the verdict. -AFP
