A former CIA station chief in Italy has written that country’s president requesting a pardon for his role in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect,
according to The Telegraph.
In his letter, former station chief Robert Seldon Lady said Washington and Rome both knew full well about the abduction of Islamist cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who was snatched from a street in Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt.
Nasr claimed he was tortured during seven months of interrogation in that Arab nation, The Telegraph reports.
In 2009, an Italian court sentenced Lady — CIA station chief in Milan when Nasr was abducted — in absentia to nine years in prison for his role in the case.
In his letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano obtained by the Corriere della Sera newspaper, Lady wrote that in organizing the abduction, he had been acting "under orders from senior American officials in liaison with senior members of the Italian government."
Lady said that "various cells of terrorists were operating in and through Milan" and that some were connected to groups responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
"Your advisers will inform you, I am sure, that my efforts and those of my colleagues were able to stop numerous plans . . . of terrorists operating in Milan and elsewhere in Italy," he told President Napolitano.
Lady said he and his wife had sunk their entire life savings into buying a house in Italy, where they had hoped to retire. They were unable to do so, however, because a magistrate had ordered the seizure of the property after Lady left Italy in 2005. It was later sold.
The former station chief said he had not been able to defend himself in court because that would have meant divulging "confidential and secret information" which would have compromised ongoing intelligence operations.
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