Milanese extraordinary rendition subject Abu Omar apparently had a previous career — as a CIA informant, on Islamist activists in Albania. Nice coup by the Chicago Tribune. — Via War & Piece.
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? […..]
But evidence gathered by prosecutors here, who have charged 13 CIA operatives with Abu Omar’s kidnapping, indicates that the abduction was a bold attempt to turn him back into the informer he once was. (Chicago Tribune) More below:
Chicago Tribune story, “Abducted imam aided CIA ally,” is a four-page Web document. Another snippet:
As a result, Italian-American relations are at their lowest point in years, 13 Americans are fugitives from Italian justice, and Milanese prosecutors and police, who had been closely monitoring Abu Omar and knew nothing about his planned abduction, are furious.
[…..]
According to the prosecutor’s application for the 13 warrants, when Abu Omar reached Cairo on a CIA-chartered aircraft, he was taken straight to the Egyptian interior minister.
If he agreed to inform for the Egyptian intelligence service, Abu Omar “would have been set free and accompanied back to Italy,” the document said.
Alternatively, the senior official said, the Americans may have hoped the Egyptians could learn something by interrogating Abu Omar about planned resistance to the impending war on Iraq.
Abu Omar refused to inform, according to the document, and spent the next 14 months in an Egyptian prison facing “terrible tortures.” After a brief release in April 2004, he was imprisoned again.
The source of the prosecution’s information is Mohammed Reda, another Egyptian imam living in Milan and one of the first people Abu Omar called during his brief release.
Asked to assess Reda’s credibility, the prosecution official asserted that “in this case, he had no reason to lie. And when he made his first statements, he was unaware he was being intercepted” by a police wiretap on his cell phone.
Abu Omar was first offered a chance to inform in Albania in 1995. According to former officials of ShIK, the Albanian National Intelligence Service, he was far from reluctant.
At the behest of the CIA, ShIK had created an anti-terrorist unit that, former ShIK officials said, was essentially an arm of the CIA.
In those years, the Albanian government, increasingly worried that it might be playing host to Islamic terrorists, accorded the CIA far more leeway than most other countries to operate within its borders.
CIA officer’s role… Read all.