100 arrests hit world paedophile ring

Taken from the Guardian, UK, November 5, 2007
By David Batty and agencies

More than 100 people in 19 countries have been arrested in an operation to dismantle a major international paedophile network, police said today.

The arrests follow an investigation into an Italian-based website that produced "tailor-made" child abuse images for 2,500 customers, according to the European police agency Europol.

In the past five months 46 people in the UK have been arrested in the operation, codenamed Koala, according to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).

There have also been 21 arrests in France, 11 in Spain and eight in Sweden.

"We have identified 2,500 customers from around the world. School teachers, swimming instructors, lawyers, IT executives," said Europol investigator Menno Hagemeijer. Some customers even travelled to the studio to watch and record the abuse and make their own videos.

"These [videos] were tailor-made orders. We want this girl in this pose in this lingerie," said Belgian prosecutor Michele Coninsx.

Europol and the EU prosecution body Eurojust launched the operation last year following the arrest of Marzola Sergio, 42, who ran the website.

He produced most of his videos in Ukraine, where police have identified 21 victims so far.

One of the videos showed a father sexually abusing his daughters aged nine and 11, according to Ceop.

Jim Gamble, chief executive of Ceop, said there were likely to be further arrests from the global investigation.

He said: "Yet again we see the technology used by paedophiles to facilitate child abuse now turned against them as a result of co-ordinated and effective international law enforcement cooperation.

"Operation Koala uncovered the true meaning of 'online child abuse': in this case, the exchanging of images in which real children were subjected to horrific sexual abuse, often to order."

In Italy, Trial Of CIA Agents Begins

In the first prosecution of a disputed counter-terrorism tactic, 26 Americans are tried in absentia in the abduction of a cleric.

Taken from The LA Times, June 9, 2007
By Tracy Wilkinson

MILAN, ITALY — As President Bush headed for Italy on Friday, a Milan court opened the trial of a group of CIA agents accused of kidnapping a radical Egyptian cleric — the first legal prosecution of one of the administration's most controversial counter-terrorism tactics.

Twenty-six American defendants, including two CIA station chiefs and an Air Force colonel, are being tried in absentia in the 2003 abduction from a Milan sidewalk of the cleric known as Abu Omar.

The tactic under scrutiny in the case is called extraordinary rendition. It involves the capture of a terrorism suspect in one country and his transfer not to the U.S. but to a third for interrogation, without court orders or judicial oversight. In many cases, including this one, the suspects have said they were tortured. Human rights officials accuse the Bush administration of using scores of extraordinary renditions to "outsource" torture, an allegation Washington denies.

The 26 Americans left Italy before the first arrest warrants were issued two years ago, and none is expected to cooperate with the Milan proceedings.

This gave a sort of virtualreality feel to Friday's court session.

Judge Oscar Magi opened the trial, reading the indictment and ticking off the Americans' names, repeating 26 times:

"Fugitive."

"Fugitive."

"Fugitive."

Court-appointed defense attorneys for each of the American defendants filled the courtroom, but the metal cages along the walls that usually contain suspects were empty. Most of the defense attorneys have never met or communicated with their clients, and in many cases don't even know their real names. (The agents allegedly used aliases in the Abu Omar operation.)
Seven Italians are also charged, including the country's former top spymaster and his No. 2, who are accused of sanctioning or aiding in the kidnap.

The Milan prosecution, along with similar cases in Germany and Switzerland, exposed the policy of renditions, which Bush was eventually forced to acknowledge. Only in Italy, however, has such a case gone to trial, a public forum that threatens to further illuminate the actions of CIA operatives and the long-denied complicity of their European counterparts.

"We want to punish terrorists — but in the courtroom," Milan's lead prosecutor, Armando Spataro, said in commenting on the significance of the landmark trial. The war on terrorism, he said, should be waged "within the full respect of the laws of our Western democracies."

In an uncomfortable coincidence for American officials that highlighted the ongoing strain in U.S.-Italian relations, the trial started just hours before Bush arrived in Italy for a day-and-a-half visit following the Group of 8 summit in Germany.

Also Friday, a new European watchdog report documented the existence of secret CIA prisons in Poland and Romania where terrorism suspects were allegedly subjected to harsh treatment.

It was the latest in a series of revelations exposing widely criticized aspects of Washington's counter-terrorism campaign.

Inside a cavernous marble building that serves as Milan's main courthouse, the trial was adjourned until June 18 while Judge Magi decides whether to suspend the proceedings pending a constitutional challenge to the case.

The Italian government has asked the constitutional court, the highest in the land, to void the indictments because of concern that prosecutors will use state secrets to make their case. A challenge initiated by the center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi, a loyal Bush ally, has been continued by the center-left government of his successor, Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

The two governments apparently shared a fear that courtroom exposure would embarrass Italy's intelligence agencies and lay bare their practices, including secret wiretaps against the defendants.

"It is in our interest to have a fast trial," defense attorney Titta Madia said, "but it is also important to understand what evidence can be used and what cannot be used."

Madia represents Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italy's military intelligence and the highest-ranking Italian defendant. Pollari, who was not in court Friday, has argued that national security shields his actions; he says he knew about, but did not condone, the abduction of Abu Omar.

The trial dealt mostly with procedural matters, including a defense motion to disallow papers filed on Abu Omar's behalf because of questions over their authenticity. The motion was denied.

Judge Magi also allowed Abu Omar and his wife, Nabila Ghali, to be listed as injured parties in the case, which allows their lawyers to question witnesses with the prosecution.

Abu Omar, whose full name is Hassan Osama Nasr, remains in Egypt, where he spent more than three years in prison after CIA operatives allegedly abducted him and flew him to Cairo on a private plane that took off from the U.S.-run part of Aviano Air Base in northern Italy.

He has said that while imprisoned he was beaten, threatened with rape, shocked with electricity, tied to a wet mattress and left in a tiny cell crawling with rats. He continues to suffer from permanent injuries, including a back injury and loss of hearing in both ears, according to his lawyer, Montasser Zayat.

Zayat traveled to Italy this week and appeared at Friday's hearing. Through an interpreter — an imam at a Milan Islamic center — Zayat said Abu Omar would like to attend the trial but was reluctant because he faced arrest. And Egyptian authorities have barred him and his wife from leaving the country, Zayat said.

"He wants to come and testify even though he could face legal action," Zayat said. "His presence is important to confirm what he has alleged happened to him."

At the time Abu Omar was picked up by the Americans, Italian law enforcement officials were building a case against him, alleging that he recruited Islamic fighters for Afghanistan and Iraq.

Italian investigators have said they were about to arrest and indict him when the rendition blew their efforts out of the water.

Abu Omar, in a telephone interview with Al Jazeera television Friday night, said he hoped the trial would "show the world the truth" about the "No. 1 terrorist," Bush, and his government's actions.

The only defendant who showed up for Friday's hearing was Luciano di Gregori, a veteran agent with the military intelligence service headed by Pollari. He is accused of helping to organize the abduction.

"I have nothing to hide," Di Gregori told reporters. "I've done this job for the last 33 years with my head held high and in the full light of day."

U.S. officials have made it clear that the accused American men and women will not be made available to Italian authorities, even if extradition orders are issued.

The U.S. strategy has evidently been one of ignoring the trial and refusing the court's jurisdiction.

One of the defendants, Robert Seldon Lady, who was the CIA station chief in Milan, initially hired an attorney and filed a number of motions. But he abruptly dropped the lawyer early this year and, like the other American defendants, began eschewing any contact with the court.

Lady, who has retired from the CIA, said in the March edition of GQ magazine that he was following instructions. "The agency has told me to keep quiet and let this blow over," he said.

It is extremely rare for a government friendly to the U.S. to attempt to prosecute its secret agents.

Spataro and other Italian law enforcement officials said they were able to build the case after the operatives involved in the Abu Omar operation spoke carelessly on easily traceable cellular telephones, left behind photocopies of their passports and driver's licenses, and ran up bills of tens of thousands of dollars at some of Milan's best hotels.

Because of its groundbreaking potential, the trial is being watched closely by human rights experts around the world.

"It is really the only time, so far, where we are actually getting to the merits of the rendition program and trying to hold someone accountable," said Meg Satterthwaite, law professor with New York University's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

A trial, she said, "requires a testing of evidence, in a court, that represents a whole different level of credibility and proof beyond what we have had until now."

Doomed To Drown: The Desperate Last Calls Of The Migrants No One Wanted To Rescue

Taken from the Independent, UK, 25 May 2007
By Peter Popham

A young Eritrean looks straight at the camera, waving a red sweatshirt above his head. The mother in brown near the bow clasps her small baby as the propeller of the Yamaha outboard engine twists uselessly in the water. The sun beats down on the turquoise water as a swell begins to lift the waves over and into the woefully crowded boat.

This is what we are in the habit of calling "an everyday tragedy". But it is the first time it has happened in front of our eyes.

The photograph was taken from a Maltese armed forces reconnaissance plane on Monday morning 80 nautical miles south of Malta, roughly halfway between the coast of Libya and the southernmost point of the EU. At around the same time, some of the 53 people on the boat, all of them from Eritrea, were begging their friends and relatives in Europe by satellite phone to help them, saying the boat's engine had stalled, that the sea was rising and that the boat risked being swamped. Calls were placed to Malta, towns in northern Italy and to London.

Nine hours later, at about 6.30pm, a fast offshore patrol vessel of the Maltese armed forces reached the zone where the 10-metre-long boat had been logged. Why this powerful boat, capable of top speeds of more than 80mph, took so long to arrive is a mystery. It drew a blank.

"We continued the search until dark," reported Malta's armed forces chief, General Carmel Varsallo, "extending the zone a further 10km in the hope of finding something, but found nothing." There is probably a simple explanation. An Eritrean woman called Lepetan, living in the Italian city of Bologna, who believes that her brother was among the passengers, had spoken to several people in the boat on Monday morning. "They called me to say water was coming on board, the engine was broken, they wanted me to get people to help them," she said. "Nobody had come to help, they told me."

She - and others in Italy who had received similar calls - phoned the coastguard on the island of Lampedusa,south of Sicily, to relay the message. When Lepetan called the boat back at 2.30pm, there were no Eritrean voices at the other end, only a recorded message in Italian telling her to try later.

In the city of Bergamo, an Eritrean called Jonas had the same experience. On board this nameless boat were Jonas's brother, sister and fiancé, and several other relatives, about 10 in total. He had spoken to them repeatedly during the morning, after he had received the first call pleading for help. But when he called again at 3pm, the phone was dead.

It is possible that the batteries of both phones died at the same time. Possible but unlikely.
Given the rising swell, the dead motor and the insane overcrowding of the boat, it seems more likely that it went down some time after 2pm on Monday with all hands. The Maltese patrol vessel, arriving more than four hours later, found no trace.

Nameless people, a nameless boat, a horrible death, all made shocking and vivid by the photograph and the reports of phone calls to people who are now our neighbours in Europe.

"Imagine if there had been 53 white Europeans on that boat, what would have been done to rescue them," said Laura Boldrini, in the Rome office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. "It is clear discrimination, as if their lives don't have the same value." But the deaths of these 53 migrants - supposing that a miracle has not intervened and their rudderless boat does not swim back into view during the next few days - is far from uncommon. At least 10,000 people are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean attempting to cross illegally into Europe. Many of them, caught by sudden storms, never had a chance. These ones did.

This week's tragic events recalled the incident in 2005 when a much bigger boat packed with around 200 Africans was caught in a storm and spotted by the Maltese military five miles off the small island of Gozo. Last year a transcript of the exchanges between rescuers and army command was leaked to Malta Today, the Maltese Sunday paper.

The captain of the fast rescue boat sent to the site told his command: "There seem to be a big quantity of people... 4.3 miles from Gozo... heading north." HQ radioed back: "Captain A Mallia... told us to monitor them and keep a distance away from them."

Commenting on the leaked exchange, the Maltese Prime Minister's office said it was "standard practice" to keep at a distance from migrant boats "in order to verify the intentions of the persons on board". "Operational units are kept at a safe distance to avoid interfering with the migrants' boat in any manner which could compromise its safety." On that occasion some 30 people died before Italians rescued the rest in Italian waters.

If the 53 Eritreans on board this boat had been rescued by the Maltese, they would have found themselves packed into an old British Army camp outside the town of Safi, which is already full to the brim with around 3,000 would-be immigrants: equal to the combined force of the island's police and army. The cost of keeping the immigrants eats up 49 per cent of the police and army budget.

Nor do the immigrants have any desire to be in Malta. The enterprising ones escape and pay sailors to take them to Sicily. Malta's crisis demands a European solution. But the EU has no appetite for this one.

Yesterday General Vassallo said his force had done "everything possible" to locate the drifting boat. Meanwhile, every day tens of such boats are venturing across the Mediterranean from Libya. A journalist in Valetta said: "We've reached an emergency situation very early in the season. We're in for a very tough summer."

US Marine's Murder Trial In 'Friendly Fire' Shooting Opens In Rome

Taken from Yahoo News, Apr 17, 2007
BY by Gina Doggett, Associated Free Press

ROME (AFP) - US marine Mario Lozano went on trial in absentia in Rome on Tuesday for shooting dead a high-ranking Italian military intelligence officer in a "friendly fire" case that is far from settled in the minds of many Italians.

The trial was adjourned for technical reasons, at the request of both sides, to May 14.

Lozano's lawyer Alberto Biffani asserted that his client was unaware of the proceedings. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Alessandro Gamberini, said for his part that procedures to seek damages from Donald Rumsfeld, who was US defence secretary at the time of the incident, were not yet complete.

Lozano, 37, is charged with voluntary homicide in the death of Nicola Calipari, as well as two counts of intent to kill Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and Andrea Carpani, a secret service agent who was driving the car fired on by Lozano.

Both Sgrena and Carpani were wounded in the shooting at a mobile checkpoint on the Baghdad airport road on March 4, 2005.

The US military exoneration of Lozano has never been accepted by the Italian government, the source of severe strain between Washington and Rome.

Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said Tuesday that he expected a verdict in the case to "establish how the events occurred and who carries responsibility for what happened," the ANSA news agency reported.

Speaking to Italian journalists while on a visit to Algiers, D'Alema said "all Italian citizens (want) the truth to be ascertained with this trial."

Biffani hailed the adjournment of the trial, which is being held at a maximum security prison on the outskirts of Rome, saying it would "give the defence precious time to study the case."

Public prosecutor Franco Ionta said repeated efforts had been made to notify Lozano of the trial.

"The only response was that for the United States the case is closed," he said, adding, however: "It's unthinkable that Lozano was unaware of the trial."

Franco Coppi, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, accused Lozano of "arrogance" and dismissed the idea that the defendant was unaware of the proceedings as "an insult." Sgrena, speaking to AFP after the hearing, called the assertion "ridiculous."

Coppi questioned how an accused could "remember to name a defence lawyer at the last moment."

A state-appointed lawyer was initially assigned to Lozano, but he retained Biffani early this month.

Lozano, who was indicted in February, broke two years of public silence this month when he told the New York Post that the Italians' vehicle was moving at speed towards his patrol.

"If you hesitate, you come home in a box. ... I did what any soldier would do in my position,"

Lozano told the newspaper. "You have a warning line, you have a danger line, and you have a kill line. Anyone inside 100 metres (109 yards) is already in the danger zone ... and you've got to take them out."

Sgrena alleges that Lozano has been ordered to lie about the chain of events.

The incident occurred near Baghdad airport shortly after Calipari negotiated the handover of Sgrena from kidnappers who had held her for a month in Iraq, where the pro-US government of Silvio Berlusconi had contributed troops to the US-led coalition despite overwhelming opposition at home.

Both sides agree that Lozano fired on the car carrying Calipari and Sgrena with Carpani at the wheel.

Italian ballistics experts concluded that Carpani was driving at a normal speed and that the US unit gave no warnings before opening fire. The Italian probe also found that there were no signposts warning of the checkpoint.

The US military insists that Lozano followed the rules of engagement and that the Italians' car was speeding towards his unit when he opened fire.

The hearing was attended by Calipari's widow Rosa, elected to the Senate last April, and by Sgrena, who told AFP: "The fact that Lozano hired the lawyer is a first recognition that there is a trial."

Both Rosa Calipari and Sgrena are suing for damages.

The case is one of several defence-related issues straining bilateral ties.

An Italian judge in February ordered 26 Americans to stand trial for the kidnapping of Osama Mustafa Hassan, better known as Abu Omar, on a Milan street on February 17, 2003. He was taken to a high-security prison outside Cairo where he says he was tortured.

Still fresh in many Italians' minds is a 1998 incident in which a low-flying US Marines plane cut an Italian ski lift cable, killing 20 people. The United States cleared the pilot of manslaughter.

Italians Debate Indictments Of Americans

Taken from Yahoo News, Fri Mar 16, 2006
By MARIA SANMINIATELLI, Associated Press

ROME - Lawyers for the Italian government appealed to a top court seeking to annul the indictments against 26 Americans - mostly CIA agents - and several Italians who face trial in Milan in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorist suspect, a lawyer said Friday.

Attorneys for the state claim that the judiciary - in this case, the Milan judge who issued the indictments - overstepped its authority, relying on secret documents and violating state secrets, said Luigi Panella, a lawyer for Italian secret service agent Marco Mancini, who also was ordered to stand trial.

Prosecutors in Milan declined comment.

The Constitutional Court, which also is examining a previous, similar appeal saying prosecutors had overstepped their authority, was expected to discuss the case April 18.

"We will respect the decision of the Constitutional Court," Panella said.

The Americans and Italian agents were indicted in February in the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003. Their trial is scheduled to open in June.

It would be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition program to secretly transfer terror suspects to third countries, where critics say they may have been tortured.

Italian prosecutors say Nasr — suspected of recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes — was kidnapped from the streets of Milan in February 2003 by CIA agents with help from Italian agents. He was allegedly taken to Aviano Air Base near Venice, then to Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, and finally to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years until Feb. 11. Nasr said he was tortured.

The Americans have all left Italy, and a senior U.S. official has said they would not be turned over for prosecution even if Rome requests it.

Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi has maintained that his government and Italian secret services were not informed about the operation and did not take part in it.

Premier Romano Prodi's government, while so far making no decision, has signaled that it would not press Washington on an extradition request.

The Italian government has tried to avoid souring relations with Washington following the indictments of the 26 Americans and, in a separate case, of a U.S. soldier who shot dead an Italian intelligence officer in Baghdad in 2005.

Italy: CIA Agents Must Be Charged Over ‘Kidnap And Torture’, Says Judge

Taken from The Times, UK, February 17, 2007
By Richard Owen

An Italian judge yesterday ordered 26 Americans, most of them believed to be CIA agents, to stand trial for the kidnapping and torture of a Muslim cleric.

In the first criminal court case arising from the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme, the judge also indicted five Italians, including the former head of Italy’s military intelligence.

The trial threatens embarassing revelations over the CIA programme in which terror suspects were seized in one country and taken to another. The tactic has been one of the most controversial in the US led War on Terror.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was allegedly kidnapped on a Milan street in February 2003 by CIA agents in collusion with their Italian counterparts. He was flown from Aviano to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and then to Egypt, where he claims that he was tortured. He was released in Cairo this week.

The trial is likely to encourage prosecutors in other European countries to pursue similar cases. A prosecutor in Munich has issued arrest warrants against 13 people for an alleged kidnapping of a German citizen.

It will also increase pressure on other European Governments to disclose the extent of their cooperation with the rendition programme. The Government in Spain has agreed to declassify an intelligence report on the CIA’s use of Spanish airports after a request from a judge.

A European Parliament report into rendition, approved this week, claims that Britain allowed 170 secret CIA flights connected to the illegal seizure of terror suspects to make stopovers at its airports, second in number only to Germany.

Washington acknowledges secret transfers of terror suspects to third countries but denies using torture.

Yesterday Caterina Interlandi, a Milan judge, set a trial hearing for June 8. The US citizens charged include Bob Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan and Jeff Castelli, described as head of CIA operations in Italy. None of the Americans is expected to return to stand trial in Italy, where defendants can be tried in absentia.

It is unclear whether the centre-left Government of Romano Prodi will seek their extradition. The previous Italain Government, headed by the staunchly pro-American Silvio Berlusconi, rejected earlier extradition requests.

The Italians who will stand trial include Nicolò Pollari, then head of Sismi, Italy’s military intelligence service. In preliminary hearings Mr Pollari denied that Italian intelligence had any role in the kidnapping. He complained that he was unable to defend himself because documents which would prove his case were classified. Prosecutors say that the kidnapping was a breach of Italian sovereignty that compromised Italy’s antiterrorism efforts.

A key witness in the trial will be Luciano Pironi, an Italian police officer who has admitted stopping Abu Omar so that CIA agents could seize him, for which he is serving a 21-month prison sentence. He claimed that the operation was approved by both the Italian and US Governments, but that he was told the purpose was to recruit the imam as an informer, not to fly him abroad to be tortured.

Guido Meroni, who represents six of the accused Americans, claimed that the evidence against them was circumstantial, based on telephone interceptions and their presence in hotels close to the kidnapping operation.

At the time of his abduction Mr Hassan was under investigation for alleged links to the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam. He has vowed to return to Italy and sue Mr Berlusconi for €10 million (£6.7 million) in compensation.

Mr Hassan claims that he was bundled into a white van, beaten and blindfolded as he made his way to the mosque. During interrogations he was blindfolded “with my hands tied up to my back, totally naked, and my body hanging from the ceiling by my feet while my head was suspended upside down”.

He said that he was held “in a tiny cell, [with] no lavatory, weak lighting and a very small hole in the ceiling for ventilation.” He added: “I was subjected to electric shocks all over my body specially in my head, nipples, testicles and penis.”

The US Administration was saying little about the arrests. Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said: “It’s a judicial matter in Italy.” Any view about possible prosecutions or extraditions would remain a matter for “internal dialogue,” he added.

Spotlight on abduction
# The CIA practice of extraordinary rendition was revealed in November 2005. It involves the US transfer of untried terror suspects, or those suspected of links to terror groups, to camps overseas, with flights using European airports as stopovers.

# President Bush admitted in September 2006 that 14 suspects had been detained in secret centres abroad, but declined to say where.

# At least 1,245 flights were operated by the CIA through European airspace and airports between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2005, according to a report for the European Parliament this week.

# The most stopovers were logged for Germany (336) followed by Britain (170) and Ireland (147).

# The flights were allowed by 14 EU countries: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.