A curious incident

Some news from Italy:

Italy's justice minister has formally asked the United States to allow Italian prosecutors to question 22 purported CIA operatives they accuse of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in 2003 from a Milan street, a Justice Ministry official said Sunday.
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The suspects are wanted in Italy for the abduction of Egyptian cleric and terrorist suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors claim he was taken by the CIA to a joint U.S.-Italian air base, flown to Germany and then to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

The operation was believed part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries where some allegedly are subjected to torture.

The Italian government has denied prior knowledge of the operation, and prosecutors have said it represented a severe breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised their anti-terrorism efforts.

This was not an operation that covered the CIA in glory. Some rather egregious violations of spycraft, and some top-notch work on the part of Italians, allowed Italian authorites to build a fairly complete picture of how the operation was conducted. Worse, these details made it into the public press.

Say Anything has the text from a recent Chicago Tribune article that recounts the slip ups. You can read it for yourself, but coming a month before the invasion of Iraq, perhaps this was a clue that the CIA's grasp of Iraq's WMD program was less than solid.

To my knowledge, I don't think it's ever been made clear why the CIA wanted Abu Omar.

What is clear is that Milan is a center for Al Qaeda in Europe, and regardless of the bumbling, I would not be at all surprised if the CIA had very good reasons for wanting to pick up Abu Omar. Milan has one of Italy's highest concentrations of Muslims.

Consider the following arrests:

November 29, 2001 - People suspected of recruiting for Al Qaeda are arrested in Milan

The two men arrested were identified as Nabil Benattia, a 35-year-old Tunisian, and Yassine Chekkouri, 35, of Morocco. Their arrests come two weeks after police picked up Abdelhalim Hafed Remadna, 35, of Algeria, as he boarded a train in Milan on Nov. 14. He had phony Italian residency papers and was trying to leave the country.

The three men and an Egyptian fugitive named Abdelkadir Es-Sayed are suspected of membership in a Milan cell and of plotting to produce false documents and recruit fighters to train in bin Laden's Afghan camps.

Es-Sayed was identified as a former preacher at another Milan mosque who was sentenced in Egypt for terrorist activities, Megale said. Prosecutors described him as a key member of the Islamic cell in Italy, with links to Islamic extremists in several countries.

July 12, 2002 - Arrests are made in breaking up an Al Qaeda logistics ring

Police in Milan have arrested nine people, mostly from north Africa, on charges of providing logistical support and false papers to members of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The arrests are part of a major crackdown on suspected cells of the network operating in the north of the country.

February 25, 2004 - A plot to bomb the Milan metro is broken up

Italian police have arrested three North Africans suspected of plotting to bomb Milan's metro and a cathedral in the north of the country.

June 8, 2004 - Arrests made in Milan in relation to the Madrid bombings

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said one of those detained in Milan was "probably one of the main craftsmen of the Madrid massacre and was preparing other attacks."
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Rabei Osman el Sayed Ahmed -- a 32-year-old Egyptian known to investigators as "Mohamed the Egyptian" -- is charged in Italy with belonging to an international terrorism organization.

July 9, 2005 - Many arrests in Milan in reaction to the London bombings

In response to the terrorist attacks on London's mass transportation systems, police in Milan conducted a two-day anti-terror security sweep in and around Milan which netted 142 arrests and the recovery of 3.3 lbs of explosive material. Most of those arrested were illegal immigrants and will be deported from the country.

That's just a taste. This piece has a detailed picture of the terrorist networks in Milan and northern Italy, and places tied to Milan.

Not surprisingly Milan appears to be the base of Italy's extremist network, which has connections to other Islamic radical groups in Europe, specifically in Spain and Germany. The primary focus of the Islamists' activities in Italy appears to have been that of a staging ground for recruiting suicide bombers to conduct attacks against U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

As this article pointed out, there is a whole underground railroad passing through Italy, possibly run with the help of the Italian mafia, that helps terrorists pass from North Africa up into Europe. Milan is a stop along that underground railroad.

According to Italian investigative sources, the Camorra could help Al Qaeda obtain forged documents and weapons for its operatives, who disembark almost daily from ships connecting Italy to the Arab countries of North Africa. In addition, in exchange for substantial cargoes of narcotics, these operatives are moved through Camorra's connections from Naples to Rome, Bologna, Milan and eventually to other major European cities such as Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid.

Whatever the mistakes made by the CIA in abducting Abu Omar, it is highly likely they had picked a valid target.