ITALY’S WAR AGAINST “THE WAR ON TERRORORISM”…
WE ARE NOT EXACTLY FIGHTING THE WAR ON TERRORISM AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO DENY WHO THE TERRORISTS ARE, WHAT FAITH DRIVES THEM AND WHAT THEIR GOALS ARE…..RSK
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
NOVEMBER 6, 2009
The War Against the War on Terrorism
Italy convicts U.S. spooks for carrying out Italian policy.Armando Spataro cut his teeth as a prosecutor hunting down Red Brigade terrorists in Italy. But Wednesday in Milan he secured the conviction of 23 Americans charged with kidnapping and spiriting out of the country Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr in 2003. Their conviction and sentencing—in absentia—is one more dubious milestone in the legal war against the war on terror.
In 2005, Mr. Spataro secured an arrest warrant for Mr. Nasr, charging him with running a terrorist-recruitment network in Europe. Mr. Nasr had been under surveillance by the Italian authorities since 9/11. We recount this history to underscore that Mr. Spataro is no naif when it comes to terrorism cases, nor does he harbor any illusions about Mr. Nasr. He also knows, from his involvement in the Madrid case, that Americans are not the only targets of Islamist terror.
And yet Mr. Spataro now insists that Mr. Nasr’s rendition—to Germany and later to Egypt, where Mr. Nasr claims he was tortured—was a crime against Italian sovereignty. No matter that the Americans convicted this week were, by Mr. Spataro’s own account, working in active and close cooperation with Italian intelligence officers.
Mr. Spataro had originally charged five Italians in the case as well, but they were either acquitted or had the charges dropped. The Italian Supreme Court ruled that the bulk of the evidence against them were state secrets and so inadmissable in court. The prosecution argued, in fact, that the decision to spirit Mr. Nasr out of the country was made at the highest levels of the Italian government, and at one point threatened to call Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as a witness.
The Italian government’s cooperation in the CIA operation is important because it is a long-standing principle of international law that officials of foreign governments operating in a country with the consent of its government should be immune from prosecution. But more broadly, Mr. Spataro’s extraordinary pursuit of terrorist hunters shows how far we have come since 9/11. The U.S. 9/11 Commission called for far greater cross-border cooperation in the pursuit of terrorists. Instead, we now have prosecutors and judges convicting American agents for “kidnapping” a man whom even Mr. Spataro wants to see in jail.
It’s unclear why Mr. Nasr was rendered to Egypt rather than arrested by the Italians, or what danger intelligence officers saw in continuing to leave him at liberty. But regardless of the particulars, it would be a mistake for Europe’s high-minded crusaders to rejoice at these convictions.
If American intelligence officers can’t cooperate with European counterparts without fear of arrest, then both Europe and America are less safe. The 9/11 hijackers formulated their plot against the U.S. in Germany, but Spain, Great Britain and Germany have also been targets. According to some reports, Mr. Nasr was planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Rome, which could have killed Italians and Americans.
Officials on both sides of the Atlantic have long said that, no matter the political differences, intelligence and law-enforcement cooperation remained strong. These cases are undermining that vital link, and innocent people may eventually pay for Mr. Spataro’s “victory.”
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