Milan - Clutching her Italian identity card in a gloved hand, the cloaked wife of a fiery Muslim cleric Wednesday tearfully recounted publicly for the first time how her husband was kidnapped on a Milan street in 2003 and sent to Egypt to endure torture and repeated imprisonment.

    Italian prosecutors say the cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, was kidnapped by CIA agents as part of a plan to transport suspected terrorists to third countries for questioning.

    Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was a political refugee in Italy and preached at the Islamic Center on Milan's Jenner Street.

    His wife, Ghali Nabila, spent more than six hours on the stand, marking the first testimony in a complicated court case that opened nearly a year ago, and has focused on the U.S. practice of "extraordinary renditions" and complicity by foreign governments in such forced relocation.

    In her testimony, translated into Italian, Nabila, 40, described her shock at seeing Abu Omar in Alexandria, Egypt, during one brief respite from Egyptian prison in October 2004.

    "I found him wasted, skinny - so skinny his hair had turned white, he had a hearing aid," she said, wearing a head-to-toe covering with only a small slit for the eyes.

    Nabila at first rebuffed prosecutors' requests to describe the torture her husband had recounted, saying she didn't want to talk about it. Advised by prosecutors that she had no choice, she tearfully proceeded: "He was tied up like he was being crucified. He was beaten up, especially around his ears. He was subject to electroshocks to many body parts."

    "To his genitals?" the prosecutors asked.

    "Yes," she replied.

    Officially, the trial has been delayed by a constitutional challenge concerning whether evidence in the case involves state secrets that were possibly gathered illegally and whether revelations would be damaging to national security. Equally important, the case could prove embarrassing to Italian politicians and security officials, who at the very least allowed the rendition on their watch.

    Judge Oscar Magi, presiding over the trial in a cramped, airless courtroom in Milan, indicated Wednesday that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and well as his predecessor, Romano Prodi, would have to testify. Berlusconi assumed the post of prime minister last week, but his previous government was in charge when Abu Omar was kidnapped.

    Italy has indicted 26 Americans - 25 CIA agents and an air force colonel - in Abu Omar's disappearance, citing a trail of incriminating cellphone exchanges intercepted by Italian prosecutors' in the days before the cleric's disappearance. The U.S. government has already said it will not extradite the suspects.

    Far more vulnerable, though, are more than a half-dozen senior officers of the Italian secret service who have also been indicted, all accused of in some way approving, masterminding or carrying out the kidnapping plan.

    The Italian government has tried to block the prosecution or at least to limit embarrassing revelations by arguing that some of the evidence is classified or privileged information. For example, it has said overzealous prosecutors should not have intercepted phone calls of CIA agents. The Constitutional Court is set to rule on this issue July 8, though it has failed to meet previous deadlines.

    But the Milanese prosecutor, Armando Spataro, has vowed to press on, noting that, even if some documents are inadmissible, there are many levels of proof.

    "We have the maximum respect for the Constitutional Court, but we don't think any decision it makes will stop this trial from going forward," he said Wednesday.

    One of the documents in question has been introduced by the defense lawyers of Nicol̃ Pollari, former head of Sismi, the Italian military intelligence agency, in an attempt to clear his name. It would presumably show that he was either unaware of the kidnapping plan or opposed it.

    Many members of Italian law enforcement agencies were furious about the kidnapping. They say they could have arrested Abu Omar at any time, and had him under surveillance for potential connections with terrorist organizations. They say that his clumsy and illegal kidnapping erased years of police work that was on the verge of gaining them valuable information into the working of Muslim groups in Italy.

    Daniele Pinto contributed reporting.

 

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    Wife of Cleric Abu Omar Testifies at US Spies' Trial in Italy
    By Tracy Wilkinson
    The Los Angeles Times

    Friday 15 May 2008

She recalls talking to him after he was allegedly abducted by the CIA five years ago in Milan and tortured while detained in Egypt. An attorney for an Italian codefendant objects to her Muslim attire.

    Milan, Italy - From behind the black veil concealing her face, Nabila Ghali blinked rapidly, her voice quivering, as she testified about the torture her husband said was inflicted after he was allegedly kidnapped by CIA agents and dumped in an Egyptian prison.

    The torturers used electrical shocks "all over his body," Ghali told a packed courtroom Wednesday, detailing the disappearance and ordeal of Abu Omar, a radical Egyptian cleric snatched from the streets of Milan five years ago.

    Ghali became the first witness to testify in the trial of 26 Americans, most of them CIA operatives, who are accused of kidnapping Abu Omar and flying him to Egypt as part of the U.S. government's secret "extraordinary rendition" program. Seven Italians, including the country's former top spymaster, are codefendants; the Americans are being tried in absentia.

    The Abu Omar case and the decision of Italian prosecutors to pursue it have provided the clearest exposure yet of one of the Bush administration's most controversial counter-terrorism tactics.

    In other action, Judge Oscar Magi also ruled that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi could be forced to testify in the trial. Never has a head of government had to speak publicly under oath about the murky world of renditions. Berlusconi would be called as a defense witness, however, which limits the scope of questions.

    Attorneys for two defendants - Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italy's elite military intelligence service, and Marco Mancini, his No. 2 - want Berlusconi to testify that evidence protected by state-secrecy laws exonerates them.

    Romano Prodi, who served as prime minister between two Berlusconi terms, can also be called to testify, Magi ruled.

    Most of Wednesday's hearing was taken up with the questioning of Ghali, who also asserted that Abu Omar, whose real name is Hassan Osama Nasr, has been offered a huge amount of money from a mysterious "security service" figure to drop his allegations.

    It was Ghali's telephone conversation with Abu Omar 14 months after he was abducted that touched off the investigation. The call from Egypt to Milan was the first sign that the missing cleric was still alive, and Italian police investigating his possible ties to terrorist groups were eavesdropping.

    Ghali, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, did not offer much in the way of revelations; she has previously spoken to journalists and human rights investigators. But her dramatic court appearance gave life to a legal proceeding whose arguments have been largely technical and tedious.

    Ghali, 39, was covered head to toe in a steel-gray tunic, long gray skirt, long black gloves and black veil and head scarf containing the tiniest of slits through which only her eyes flashed.

    She recounted the now familiar sequence of events on the morning of Feb. 17, 2003, when people speaking Italian intercepted Abu Omar as he walked to the mosque, bundled him into a van and sped away. He has said he was blindfolded, drugged and stripped before being flown in a small CIA jet to Egypt, where he landed as the morning call to prayer filled the air.

    Ghali described the torture that Abu Omar has said left him with permanent physical and psychological damage and nearly drove him to suicide, including beatings, being hung as though crucified and electrical shocks applied to his genitals and other body parts.

    These last words came slowly, hesitantly, an emotional portion of an otherwise straightforward testimony. Her gloved hands fluttered to her blinking eyes and she appeared to weep.

    Ghali's heavy covering provided problems for the court. Granting a request from her attorney Luca Bauccio, the judge banished all cameras from the courtroom and allowed her to begin her testimony from behind a screen.

    Once behind the screen, she was required to remove part of the veil so the judge could compare her face to the picture on her identification document.

    "I will verify she is Mrs. Nabila Ghali," Magi said. "What's the problem?"

    "The problem is not that we cannot see her but that what she is wearing is a symbol of fanaticism and extremism," Titta Madia, defense attorney for Pollari, said later. He added that her testimony was "hostile and aggressive" and suggested she was motivated by hatred for the U.S. and the West.

    Lead prosecutor Armando Spataro said he hoped her presence would achieve two goals. Though secondhand, her accounts of what happened will have added weight if Abu Omar does not testify. Prosecutors want to call on Abu Omar but say that Egyptian authorities have not granted him permission to travel to Italy. Another complication: He would face possible criminal charges if he returned. Italian anti-terrorism police say they were on the verge of arresting Abu Omar when the CIA intervened.

    Prosecutors also used Ghali to verify the authenticity of two letters, one written by her and the other by her husband. If he doesn't testify, the letters, too, will be entered as evidence.

    In the letter attributed to him, obtained by The Times, Abu Omar writes of repeated imprisonments and again details his treatment in an Egyptian cell: "I was feted with a festival of torture."

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    wilkinson@latimes.com