Egyptian cleric to sue Berlusconi
ROME: Italy s government on Thursday backed a probe into the possible role of its intelligence services in the alleged abduction of an Egyptian by U.S. agents, a day after senior intelligence figures were arrested in connection with the case. Italian Defense Minister Arturo Parisi said Prime Minister Romano Prodi s government would cooperate with the courts in investigating the alleged abduction, which threatens to stain the record of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The radical Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was living in asylum in Italy when he was allegedly seized by agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2003 in the northern city of Milan. He was allegedly taken to a nearby U.S. air base for interrogation and later transferred via Germany to Egypt, where he is still in prison, according to an ongoing probe by a Milan prosecutor into the abduction.
He will sue Silvio Berlusconi for 10 million euros, in his capacity as prime minister and for his involvement in the kidnap by having allowed the CIA to seize him, Montasser Al-Zayat, the cleric s lawyer said.
Abu Omar is currently being held in Tora prison, where many political detainees in Egypt are held. Marco Mancini, a top director of SISMI, the Italian secret military intelligence service, was arrested along with his predecessor Gustavo Pignero on Wednesday for a possible role in the abduction. The two are suspected of complicity in the illegal detention of the cleric. Also suspected of involvement in the case are 22 CIA agents who face international arrest warrants issued by the Milan prosecutor in 2005. The prosecutor issued arrest warrants for a further four US citizens on Wednesday. The former government of Berlusconi maintained when it was in power that the alleged abduction was carried out without its knowledge, but Massimo D Alema, the foreign minister in Prodi s center-left leadership, has cast doubt on this claim. The Americans have always said that they did not violate Italian sovereignty, he said. We will have to see. Perhaps they were right. Parisi on Thursday meanwhile stressed what he called the government s belief in the loyalty of the military intelligence service, an apparent reference to the relationship between SISMI and the Berlusconi government. Interior Minister Guiliano Amato called for the intelligence service to be reformed and for a solution to the eternal problem of fixing limits on intelligence operations. Right-wing officials leapt to the defense of SISMI. A group of senators from Berlusconi s Forza Italia party slammed the arrests as unjustified and said they held Italy up to the ridicule of the world . Omar s lawyers announced earlier on Thursday that he planned to sue Berlusconi for aiding the kidnap by letting the CIA seize him in Milan. AFP
