How The Italian Police Blew The Lid Off Bushco's Practice Of "Extraordinary Rendition"

[kpete]

Italy's top counterterrorism official, Bruno Megale, took the stand in Milan yesterday to tell how tapping phones helped to blow the lid off the Bush Administration's practice of "extraordinary rendition."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rendition29-2008may29,0,2445725.story

Megale obtained records of all cellphone traffic from the transmission tower nearest the spot where Abu Omar was abducted, for a 2 1/2 -hour period around the time he disappeared. There were 2,000 calls.

Then, using a computer program, Megale was able to narrow down the pool by tracing the phones that had called each other, in other words, an indication of a group of people working together. Seventeen phone numbers, which showed intensifying use around the time of the abduction, were pinpointed. By following all other calls made from those phones, the investigators ultimately identified 60 numbers, including that of a CIA officer working undercover at the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

In his testimony, Megale revealed that one telephone number he recognized was that of Robert Seldon Lady, then-CIA station chief in Milan. Lady and Megale had worked together in counter-terrorism investigations. It was a number, Megale said somberly, that he and his team knew.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rendition29-2008may29,0,2445725.story

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/american_spies_on_trial_in_ita.php

[ellie]

1. Thanks Kpete!

That was very interesting and depressing all at the same time. I fear there will never be justice.

[Subdivisions]

2. Whoa! K&R n/t

[Muttocracy]

3. interesting - I was listening to an archive of the Senate hearing on extradition treaties last week

Not much that caught my attention, but there was something about whether Italy would go along with treaties. Hmmm, wonder if this was why the questions was asked.

[EFerrari]

4. I'd like the Italians to explain their cooperation with rendition.

Far from trying to stop it by "blowing the lid off" anything, they've been very willing enablers of rendition flights.

Clive Stafford Smith, counsel for some 60 Gitmo detainees, pointed out this bit of hypocrisy in his last interview on Amy's show.

It looks like their real objection isn't to rendition at all, but to having the CIA running around Italy without fully notifying the Italian government of their activities

[bdamomma]

5. kick

[Usrename]

6. Social networks. The new McCarthyism.

That's how it will be done. When martial law is declared the uppidy folks that they haul away will all be identified through the new science of social network analysis. If the Nazis would have had this technology they could have prevailed.

[Wilms]

7. K&R n/t

[OneBlueSky]

8. I've come to the conclusion that Bush and his ilk just LIKE torturing people . . .

bottom line, they're just sadists . . . they like to have people tortured, for the same reason they like to start wars . . . it seems to help them compensate for their inadequacies, which are legion and which apparently impact their self-image and self-worth quite negatively . . . inflicting pain and violence on others makes them feel like the "real men" . . . they're just sick . . .