In November, 2009, an Italian criminal court convicted 22 CIA agents and one Air Force officer of kidnapping for snatching an Egyptian-born Muslim cleric known as Abu Omar from a Milan street and rendering him to Egypt to be tortured. The 23 Americans were sentenced in absentia to from five to eight years in prison. It is the only criminal prosecution to date of anyone involved in the Bush administration’s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation program.
Writer Steve Hendricks recreates this rare episode of accountability in his new book A Kidnapping in Milan: the CIA on Trial, a riveting prosecutor-versus-spy pageturner that reveals not only how lawless and abusive the CIA’s Milan operation was, but also how bungling and utterly counterproductive.
I had the chance to interview Steve Hendricks last week about the book and about the quest for accountability in the U.S. and abroad. Here’s what he had to say.
via www.aclu.org
For further analysis of extraordinary rendition visit SSRN.com and download
DiMento, Joseph F. and Geis, Gilbert, Extraordinary Rendition: Legal and Moral Considerations. I Diritti Umani Di Fronte Al Giudice Internazionale, p. 151, 2009; UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2010-7. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1572762
