Italian court orders arrests of six CIA operatives UPDATE

[emad]

Italian court orders arrests of six CIA operatives UPDATE
07.25.2005, 02:30 PM

(Updating with further details, background)

MILAN (AFX) - An Italian appeals court today ordered the arrest of six CIA (US Central Intelligence Agency) operatives accused of involvement in the 2003 kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric from a street in Milan.

A court last month issued arrest warrants for the other 13 US intelligence operatives Italy says took part in a clandestine operation to kidnap Egyptian national Abu Omar, handing him over to Egyptian authorities for questioning.

State prosecutor Armando Spataro had appealed a ruling not to proceed with the arrest of the remaining six of the 19-strong unit because they had played no direct role in the abduction, which has soured relations between Italy and its ally, the United States.

The prosecutor told the court last week that the probe into the kidnapping had turned up 'serious evidence of responsibility' of the six, named as Eliana Castaldo, Victor Castellano, John Thomas Gurley, James Robert Kirkland, Anne Lidia Jenkins and Brenda Liliana Ibanez.

http://www.forbes.com/finance/feeds/afx/2005/07/25/afx2155483.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Will right wing extremists now complaint about Italy?

Since they "outed" all these undercover agents' names?

[htuttle]

2. I'd still bet they weren't technically CIA operatives when they did this

The CIA has too much congressional oversight to get away with this sort of operation nowdays.

I bet they were working out of some office at the Pentagon -- maybe reassigned from the CIA. Rumsfeld has a whole bunch of 'black ops' units with absolutely no congressional oversight at all (like Boykin's 'Task Force 121'). I'd bet that was who actually ran the operation.

[Jara sang]

3. Like the Strategic Support Branch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29414-2005Jan22.html

Northern Virginia is crawling with these black ops groups, one is colloquially call 'The Secret Army of Northern Virginia'. They also operate outside of the posse comitatus

[bemildred]

4. Schutzstaffel

I don't know why, something just made me think of that.

The Schutzstaffel (Protective Squadron), or SS, was a large paramilitary organization that belonged to the Nazi party. The SS was led by Heinrich Himmler from 1929 until it was disbanded in 1945 with the defeat of Germany in World War II. The Nazis regarded the SS as an elite unit, a Party's "praetorian guard", with all SS personnel selected on racial and ideological grounds. The SS was distinguished from the German military, Nazi Party, and German state officials by their own SS ranks, SS unit insignia, and SS uniforms.

The SS fighting units, called the Waffen-SS, were to evolve into highly skilled and effective soldiers, in many cases superior in these respects to the German army, the Heer.

The most recognizable branches of the SS, later charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, were the departments that comprised the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Security Head Office), Sicherheitsdienst (SD, Security Service), Einsatzgruppen (Special Mission Groups), the concentration camp service known as the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV, Death's Head Formations), and the Gestapo (Secret State Police).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schutzstaffel

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Gee,

maybe we shouldn't have assassinated their journalist, ya think?

[Miss Chybil]

6. This case shines the light on a bit of hypocrisy in ourselves...

I'll tell you why. Many people on this board, and I remember Randi Rhodes, on AAR, made a big stink when Porter Goss said he has an excellent idea where bin Laden is, but they can't go get him because he's in Pakistan and Pakistan is a sovereign nation. People went ape shit. People on the left thought it was right to conduct military operations into a sovereign nation - while at the same time bemoaning, (and rightly so), the military escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan. (I have no qualms about the war in Afghanistan. I wish they would have finished the job, then we wouldn't be talking about "Where's bin Laden?") But, at the same time, every time US Special Forces have been reported to have crossed Pakistani borders, people here have gone all willy nilly about that. You can't have it both ways.

Anyway, Randi, and others here, spent a good deal of time on the subject of why can't we just go into Pakistan and get him? So, why is that different than the CIA going into Italy to grab somebody? Which everybody seems upset about now. And why would that be different than Chavez sending troops, or operatives, into the US to get Luis Posada Carriles?

I, personally, think sovereignty should be respected. If they know where bin Laden is, it seems it would be easy enough to work with the Pakistanis to get him. (Which points out the fact Goss's statement was more than likely, bullshit.) I also think policy should be consistent. If we can go into Italy, unbeknownst to its government,(not that we should), we can go into Pakistan - or, not.

We can't play both sides of the same coin. Either covert operations into sovereign nations, without those nations approval, is a legitimate exercise, or it's not.