Lawyer in CIA trial in Italy challenges identities of American defendants

Lawyer in CIA trial challenges identities

MILAN — A lawyer representing half of the American defendants charged in the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003 argued on Wednesday that most of her clients have never been positively identified and should be found innocent.

Arianna Barbazza said 12 of her 13 clients have been identified either on the basis of poor quality passport photographs or through cell phone records. Barbazza argued that the evidence does not meet standards for identifying defendants charged with a crime as serious as kidnapping.

“They need to be absolved because we don’t have certain and physical identification,” she told the court.

Twenty-six Americans, all but one believed to be CIA agents, are on trial in absentia, accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr as part of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. All are considered fugitives, and have international arrest warrants issued against them. Seven Italians also are charged.

The CIA has declined to comment on the case, and Italy’s government has denied any involvement. All the defendants have denied the charges. In Italy, defendants are not required to attend their trials, and none of the 26 Americans have.

Barbazza is a court-appointed lawyer and never had contacts with her clients.

She acknowledged that one of them, former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady, was well-known in the northern Italian city and was positively identified.

However, she said evidence linking him to the cleric’s disappearance is insufficient.

Barbazza also argued that Lady should be granted diplomatic immunity. Prosecutors, however, have said such immunity does not apply to serious crimes which carry sentences of more than five years in jail.

Prosecutors say Nasr was taken in broad daylight from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003, transferred in the back of a van to the Aviano air base in northern Italy, then flown to the Ramstein air base in southern Germany before being flown onward to Egypt — where he was allegedly tortured.

Prosecutors have demanded prison sentences ranging from 10 to 13 years for the American defendants. A verdict is expected next month.

Barbazza also said that if the judge determined that there was indeed a CIA order for Nasr’s kidnapping, her clients would just have followed orders.

“They were the last link of a long chain,” she said.

Human rights advocates say renditions were the CIA’s way of outsourcing the torture of suspected terrorists to countries where it was practiced. The CIA hasn’t commented on the case, the first in any country to scrutinize extraordinary renditions.