ROME — The secret agents who captured Abu Omar weren't very secret.
In the days surrounding their abduction of the radical Egyptian cleric on a Milan street nearly three years ago, they chatted openly on their cellular phones, ran up huge bills at luxury hotels and even managed to let their rental cars be photographed by traffic cameras as they drove illegally through pedestrian walkways.
The case became the most well-documented example of a secret CIA practice aimed at hunting down terrorism suspects. But Italy's efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice have stalled, a casualty of political stonewalling, international intrigue and public apathy.
Italy has issued Europe-wide arrest warrants for the alleged captors of the cleric, whose full name is Hassan Osama Nasr: 22 CIA operatives, including the former station chief in Milan. Italian prosecutors say Abu Omar, whom investigators suspected of heading a terrorist network, was transported by U.S. agents to an Egyptian prison, where he has said he was tortured.
The operation in Milan was one example in what is now known to be the much wider practice by U.S. intelligence services of using European soil and airspace for the possibly illegal detention of dozens of suspects. The practice involves hidden prisons and clandestine flights in and out of European airports.
Getting to the bottom of the activities has proved difficult and, in some cases, embarrassing for governments not only in Italy but also Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Britain.
The men and women who grabbed Abu Omar as he walked to a Milan mosque in February 2003 are long gone, the last of them having left the country ahead of the decision of an Italian court in June to issue nationwide arrest warrants. Last week, another court expanded the warrants to the European Union, so the suspects now risk arrest anywhere in the 25-nation bloc.
State prosecutors based in Milan, who are pressing the case, believe the paper and electronic trail left behind by the CIA operatives provides a remarkable trove of evidence, especially for an operation that was supposed to be clandestine. The prosecutors asked the government to demand extradition from the U.S. of the 22 suspects.
And that is where the case has stalled.
The pro-U.S. government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is refusing to forward the extradition requests and instead has asked for more documentation, a highly unusual request that prosecutors regard as a delaying tactic.
