ROME — Italian authorities ordered the arrests of a former CIA station chief, an Air Force commander and two other Americans and took a top Italian spymaster into custody Wednesday as they broadened their investigation into the CIA's alleged abduction of a radical Muslim imam.
The new warrants issued by prosecutors in Milan bring to 26 the number of Americans, most of them alleged CIA operatives, being sought in connection with the February 2003 abduction of Hassan Osama Nasr. None of the Americans named in the warrants are still in Italy or have been arrested.
The cleric, known as Abu Omar, was seized on a Milan street and taken to a prison in his native Egypt, where, he has claimed, he was tortured.
U.S. and Italian authorities believe Abu Omar was involved in recruiting terrorists, and Italian police have said they were planning to arrest him when the CIA intervened.
Two Italian intelligence agents also have been added to the indictment, the first official acknowledgment of apparent Italian involvement in the best-documented alleged case of a controversial CIA practice known as extraordinary rendition. This could have broad implications for hotly disputed European collusion in CIA anti-terrorism operations, in an episode seen by many here as a violation of national sovereignty.
Marco Mancini, the No. 2 official in Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, was arrested on suspicion of collaborating in the alleged CIA-run abduction, Italian authorities said. A second SISMI official, Gen. Gustavo Pignero, who is in poor health, was placed under house arrest.
Before the Italians' arrests, top officials had denied knowledge of the case. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi repeatedly said he was unaware of the abduction, and his government blocked efforts by the Milan prosecutors to pursue the case. When lead Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro sought the extradition of several of the American suspects early this year, Berlusconi's justice minister, Roberto Castelli, refused to cooperate.
A center-left coalition replaced Berlusconi's government in May, and it may be giving a better hearing to the Milan prosecutors. In marked contrast to the previous administration, Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government Wednesday night pledged "maximum cooperation" with the judiciary and expressed faith in the "institutional loyalty" of the state security services.
