Europeans probe CIA role in abductions

A call from afar
When Nasr vanished, his family and mosque leaders reported it as a kidnapping, after a witness said she saw the abduction. The witness, a recent immigrant, said she was scared to repeat her story to the police, however, leading some investigators to speculate that Nasr had disappeared on his own and gone to Iraq to fight U.S. forces.

Italian police opened a missing person investigation, but the case stalled for more than a year. That changed in April 2004, when Nasr's wife unexpectedly received a telephone call from her husband. He told her he had been kidnapped and taken to a U.S. air base in Italy. He said he was then flown to another U.S. base, before being taken to Cairo.

The call was recorded by Italian police, who had kept the wiretap on Nasr's home telephone in place. Although transcripts have not been made public, Nasr's colleagues at the mosque said he reported that he had been tortured and kept naked in subfreezing temperatures in a prison in Cairo.

During the phone call, Nasr told his wife that he had been let out of prison in Egypt but remained under house arrest. His relatives have said they believe he was imprisoned again shortly afterward when news of the recorded conversation was reported by Italian newspapers.

Signs of CIA involvement
The existence of the wiretap is revealed in sealed Italian court papers reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents, dated in the spring of 2004, include a judge's authorization to continue the wiretap and show that investigators were pursuing the theory that covert agents — possibly from the United States, Italy or Egypt — were behind the kidnapping.

Italian investigators have since determined that 15 agents, some of them CIA operatives, were involved in Nasr's abduction, according to reports in Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian daily. Investigators were able to trace calls made by the agents by linking calls made by the same phones near the mosque and Aviano Air Base on the day Nasr vanished, the newspaper reported.

The investigation is being led by Armando Spataro, a well-known counterterrorism prosecutor whose office has also built a hard-nosed reputation for winning convictions in cases involving the Mafia and political corruption. Spataro, who has worked closely with U.S. officials in the past on terrorism cases, confirmed that he visited Aviano last month but declined to comment further.

Capt. Eric Elliott, a U.S. military spokesman at Aviano, said Spataro met at the base for several hours with Italian military officials, who then forwarded a request for records to their American counterparts. Elliott declined to describe the records being sought, citing "an active investigation."

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