The following is an excerpt from a Chicago Tribune article, “Abducted imam aided CIA ally.” On a separate but related note, the number of documents being classified by the federal government increased 10 percent last year to 15.6 million. In essence we are classifying more information, whisking away people under surveillance in and by other countries, and turning these people over to other governments in order to be tortured. With all of the talk of President Bush being steadfast in his actions and beliefs, I sure wish he would take accountability for the consequences of those actions. Items in bold are my doing.

Italy — Among the multiple mysteries swirling around the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr in Italy, one stands out as by far the most perplexing.

Why would the U.S. government go to elaborate lengths to seize a 39-year-old Egyptian who, according to former Albanian intelligence officials, was once the CIA’s most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania?

Neither the Bush administration nor the CIA has acknowledged any role in the operation. But U.S. government officials privately paint Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, as a dangerous terrorist who once plotted to kill the Egyptian foreign minister and was worthy of an audacious daylight abduction involving more than 20 operatives, weeks of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition that she not be identified, asserted: “The world’s a better place with this guy off the streets.”

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