CIAs INDICTED (Romano, Castelli, Russomondo, De Sousa), also top Italy Spies

dublin | anti-war / imperialism | news report Thursday July 06, 2006 07:48 by Carolyn Kuhn

CIA kidnap / torture story racheted up to new level.

[JULY 5, 2006] Italy has just indicted three CIA officers and a U.S. Air Force officer on charges that they participated in the illegal 2003 rendition, or torture/kidnap, of a Muslim cleric in Milan. They are:

LEFT, USAF Col. Joseph Romano, indicted for kidnaping.

Jeffrey CASTELLI, the head CIA honcho in Italy at the time (Chief of Station in Rome), now believed to be working at CIA headquarters in Virginia.
Ralph Henry RUSSOMANDO
Sabrina DE SOUSA
Col. Joseph L. ROMANO III, (LEFT in the photo) commander of the 31st Security Police Squadron at the Aviano Air Base at the time, now working at the Pentagon.

Charged at the same time were two Italian intelligence (SISMI) officers, the first Italians charged so far in the case. They are: Marco Mancini, the director of operations of the spy service SISMI, and General Gustavo Pignero, who was in charge of SISMI operations in northern Italy and was Mancini's superior. Mancini was jailed and Pignero placed under house arrest because he claimed to be ill.

Besides the persons charged today, 22 other CIA operatives have already been indicted and are subject to arrest in Europe and other jurisdictions of Interpol. Many of these people work in State Department positions at U.S. embassies.

Monica Courtney ADLER
Drew Carlyle CHANNING
John Kevin DUFFIN
Raymond Michael HARBAUGH
James Thomas HARBISON
Ben Amar HARTY
Anne Linda JENKINS
James Robert KIRKLAND
Cynthia Dame LOGAN
Gregory ASHERLEIGH
Lorenzo Gabriel CARRERA
Eliana CASTALDO
Victor CASTELLANO
Vincent FALDO
John Thomas GURLEY
Brenda Liliana IBANEZ
Robert Seldon LADY (Leader of the rendition, now retired from the CIA and living in Florida or New York City.)
Betnie MEDERO
L. George PURVIS
Pilar RUEDA
Joseph SOFIN
Michalis VASILOU

Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, is believed to have been abducted from a Milan street on 17 February 2003, and flown out of the country from Aviano air base north of Venice via a jet leased from the Boston Red Sox.

The cleric, who had been granted refugee status in Italy, was already under investigation by Italian officers as part of a terrorism inquiry.

He is still being held in a jail in Egypt, but did make contact with his family and friends during a brief release. A friend who spoke to him said he had suffered electric shocks and other severe torture. The rendition leader, Robert Lady, was present during some of the tortures in Egypt according to prosecutors.