Surveillance techniques used to build a strong case against Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, or Abu Omar, were used in the two year investigation that determined who took part in his abduction. According to the NYT, anonymous senior officials in Milan’s police and prosecutor’s offices felt betrayed by those CIA officers who were involved in their investigation of Abu Omar, and share the same frustration of other European counterintelligence agencies:
“The American system is of little use to us,” a senior Italian counterterrorism investigator said. “It’s a one-way street. We give them what we have, but we are given no useful information that can help us prosecute people.”
Sharing access has become a sore point between American and European officials in high-profile terrorism cases in Europe, including that of Mounir el-Motassadeq, a suspected associate of several Sept. 11 hijackers. On Feb. 19, 2003, he was convicted in Germany on charges related to the attacks in 2001 – the only conviction thus far – but the case crumbled on appeal. He was released in April 2004. German officials blamed American officials for failing to provide evidence. He is being retried.
And the Bush administration has refused to allow Spanish officials to interview Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a central Qaeda suspect, in their case against two men on trial in Madrid on charges of helping to plan the attacks in 2001.
Responding to interviews being given by former American intelligence officials and their claims political motivations may be behind the warrants, an Italian judicial official said,
“I think people in Washington may not understand that in Italy a prosecutor does not choose what to investigate. He has a legal obligation to investigate any crime.”
People in Washington understand it and find it ridiculous. Why respect the laws of others, when they have contempt for their own.
The Bush administration will have a difficult time making the political motivation smear stick. On Oct. 6, 2004, PBS Frontline conducted an interview with Armando Spataro, the senior prosecutor in Milan who led the investigation of the CIA officers, and he was asked what could be done to improve cooperation with the Americans:
Look, I am fairly convinced that we already have many conventions, international resolutions, by the United Nations, the European Union. We have agreements among police forces, and we also have physical places where we meet. I believe that it is important to really keep alive this cooperation. This means to blindly trust mutual reliability of the systems.
I also have to say, though, that with respect to Italy, our relationship is excellent, our requests have always been answered quickly, and we did the same when it was the other way around. Also, with respect to Rabei’s case, we immediately notified the Americans, as well as other main European countries that were involved in the investigation, with copies of conversations, recordings, interviews, because it is good that the knowledge of these phenomena grows everywhere in the same way and at the same time.
The United States betrayed that trust.
When Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar blamed the Madrid bombings on the ETA knowing it was an al Qaeda operation, many Americans reviled the Spanish people for voting Aznar out and the Socialist Party in, mimicking the Bush administration’s ravings they were “rewarding terrorism“.
The greater terror, more than a gov’t that has no respect for justice and the informed consent of those it governs, are the people willing to be represented by those who betray that trust time and again.
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