CIA in Italy: War on Terror

This is an odd one. I've read a couple things on it and it sounds fishy. I'm not even sure why the CIA would be involved with this, but there must have been a good reason. (Hopefully)

A spokesman for the Italian government denied yesterday that any branch of Italy's government or secret service knew about the alleged CIA abduction of terrorism suspect Hassan Moustafa Osama Nasr from the streets of Milan, and said the US ambassador has been summoned to offer an explanation of the operation.

''It is impossible to hypothesize that it was authorized in any way" by Italy, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Carlo Giovanardi told Italian lawmakers yesterday in the first public remarks by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government on Nasr's capture.

And

The 2003 abduction of Nasr, a radical cleric suspected of recruiting terrorists, caused an embarrassing rift between the two countries last week when a Milan judge indicted 13 CIA agents, accusing them of kidnapping Nasr and sending him to Cairo, where he said he was brutally tortured. Prosecutors, who spent years investigating the disappearance as a criminal abduction, have prepared extradition requests for the US operatives and have asked Interpol for help in appending those charged.

And

''It is very hard, Mr. Minister, to think that in Milan, a number between 20 and 40 foreign citizens, probably members of US intelligence, moved freely" near one of the most monitored mosques in Italy and abducted a man who was being monitored by Italy's police without their knowledge, Marco Minniti, deputy of the Democrat Left opposition, said during the hearing. ''Is it possible that all of this escaped everyone?"

An angry debate also erupted yesterday among Italian lawmakers about how closely Italy should be cooperating in the war on terror with the United States, which is believed to have covertly abducted more than 100 people worldwide without judicial permission since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in a controversial practice known as ''extraordinary rendition."

I must say that I don't like rendition in any form. I don't believe that there is justification for performing interogations out of country. The act strikes me as cowardly. If you can't shoot your own dog, you shouldn't be asking someone else to do it. There are many arguments related to rendition that are fairly well laid out in this Weekly Standard article.