MILAN, Italy — They ran up tabs of thousands of dollars at some of Milan's best hotels and restaurants. They chatted easily on their cellular telephones and gave out passport, frequent-flier and driver's license numbers when booking flights or renting cars.
And now they are fugitives.
If Italian authorities are right, they have exposed a CIA operation here that on some levels was brazen and perhaps reckless, even as it successfully spirited away a notorious Egyptian imam.
An Italian judge has issued arrest orders for 13 CIA operatives, and additional warrants are possible, in what may be the first time an ally of Washington has attempted to prosecute U.S. spies. The suspects face kidnapping charges, which carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
Judicial authorities said Saturday that they may also seek the arrest of a senior U.S. Air Force commander who they say allowed the joint U.S.-Italian Aviano Air Base in northern Italy to be used in the abduction of Hassan Osama Nasr, a radical cleric better known as Abu Omar.
Italian authorities contend that Abu Omar was kidnapped by the American agents nearly 2 1/2 years ago and taken to Egypt, where he was tortured. His whereabouts remain unknown.
Abu Omar had been long suspected of terrorist activities by Italian authorities, who had him under surveillance as part of an investigation into a Muslim extremist cell accused of recruiting and sending suicide bombers and fighters to Iraq.
The alleged former CIA station chief in Milan, a 51-year-old Honduran-born American, is among those named in the arrest warrants. He is believed to have accompanied or followed Abu Omar to Egypt and been present for some of the interrogations, a senior Italian judicial official said Saturday.
That raises the possibility that the American agent was aware of the alleged torture, the Italian official said. The man's movements were tracked by his use of a cellphone to make calls from Egypt in the two weeks after the disappearance of Abu Omar, the official said.
"He was the one who knew everything about Abu Omar," the official said, referring to the ex-station chief, "so he would have been very useful in the interrogation."
Abu Omar, during a brief period of freedom in 2004, told associates that he was abducted by U.S. agents and taken to Egypt, where he was tortured with electric shocks to his genitals and beatings during the interrogations.
