Freed CIA prisoner renders his version of the truth
Despite orders to remain silent, radical imam Abu Omar tells of being abducted by the CIA, shuttled to Egypt and tortured for a year.
By Matthias Gebauer
March 20, 2007 | ALEXANDRIA, Egypt -- 
Osama Hussein Nasr comes downstairs to show the way to his house in Alexandria, which is difficult to find amid the chaos of narrow alleys with open sewers. Suddenly he's standing there, in front of a small cafe -- a diminutive man with a long, scruffy beard and a round white cap on his head. After a brief handshake, the man better known as Abu Omar urges us to follow him back upstairs. It's better to talk there, he says: "They're everywhere down here on the street, the security people."
Abu Omar isn't allowed to receive visits from Western journalists. He says his "friends" -- the Egyptian authorities -- have "strongly advised" him to observe this prohibition. Abu Omar is nervous. The 46-year-old was released from jail on Feb. 11 and has been free, at least officially, ever since. The authorities have dropped all charges against him. Nevertheless, he is violating his orders by meeting with us. "I have two options," he says. "Either I can keep quiet, do what I'm told and live a quiet life -- or I can tell my story to the world and risk running into a lot of problems."
He keeps looking over his shoulder throughout the few meters it takes to get to his decrepit apartment building in a side alley. He has to watch his back: The men lurking behind hookahs, the street vendors, the men loitering around -- any one of them could be a policeman. "I'm under surveillance around the clock," Abu Omar says. "To them, I'm a walking risk factor." But his decision, preceded by lengthy negotiations with his lawyer in Cairo, now stands. Abu Omar wants to talk, "no matter what the consequences for me will be." As his lawyer puts it: The world must be told "the truth."
Abu Omar's story is at the center of one of the most dubious CIA operations to be conducted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. On Feb. 17, 2003, agents employed by the U.S. foreign intelligence agency kidnapped the radical imam right off the street in the center of Milan, Italy. The imam was certainly no docile pacifist: For years he had preached messages of hate against the United States to fundamentalist Muslims in Milan. He fought in Afghanistan himself and he's said to have encouraged young recruits of jihad to do the same. To the Italians, Abu Omar was one of the big fish and his arrest was imminent. But for the CIA he was a target and the U.S. terrorist hunters didn't want to wait for the rule of law to complete its course. They wanted men like Omar to be taken out of circulation as quickly and quietly as possible.
Omar's kidnappers flew him back to his home country of Egypt, using one of the CIA's Learjets -- planes that have since become notorious for their role in clandestinely shuttling suspected terrorists through Europe on their way to countries that often permitted torture to extract confessions and information. The plan was for the Egyptian intelligence agency's unscrupulous interrogators to extract as much information out of Omar as possible.
Egypt complied with its ally's request. If what Abu Omar says is true, what began for him on the other side of the Mediterranean was an experience of martyrdom reminiscent of the darkest days of Latin American dictatorships: Omar's torturers, whom he describes as "vassals of the United States," connected electrodes to his genitalia to make him talk. They almost drove him insane by playing loud music. He says he still can't control his bladder today. As evidence, he reveals small black spots on his skin, burns from the electric shocks.
The investigators didn't extract any useful information from Abu Omar and the operation became a disaster for the CIA. There is not a single case of the agency's kidnappings -- known as "renditions" in the jargon of its employees -- that is better documented than that of Abu Omar. After finding the passports of the agents involved, as well as their enormous restaurant expense claims, and tracing their phones calls, the Milan prosecutor ultimately moved to file charges against the kidnappers. The main trial proceedings are set to start in June. And even if the 26 CIA agents charged in the case don't appear in the dock, the trial is still expected to be a highly uncomfortable affair for many high-profile parties. That includes the Italian government, which is seeking to put the brakes on the trial using the country's highest court.
Abu Omar breathes heavily at the top of the four flights of stairs to his three-room apartment. As soon as he's inside, he immediately bolts the door and pulls the curtains shut. Groaning, he drops onto one of the simple, gold-dyed armchairs in the tiny living room, illuminated by the cold light from a neon tube on the ceiling. "I feel like an old man," the 46-year-old says. "Every movement hurts my back, and my joints are still sore from being constantly restrained in prison." His release from jail may have been a "gift from God," but his life has been left in ruins and it is unlikely he will ever be able to put it back together, he says.
Indeed, there's not much left of the man Italian intelligence dossiers describe as a fundamentalist Muslim agitator and a fiery advocate of jihad. Abu Omar sits in the cramped apartment with his veiled wife, Nabila, and his son, Mohammed. His brother pays the rent. Egypt has banned Abu Omar from preaching in the country, but it's the only profession he knows. "My only diversion is the walk to a little mosque. Apart from that, I just sit here all day," he says.
Images from Italy are flashing on the small TV set -- another report on the trial against the CIA's terrorist hunters. Abu Omar begins telling his story. He vividly remembers the late morning of Feb. 17, 2003. It seemed like it would be a day just like any other. He was on the way to his mosque, located just a few minutes from his apartment, when a man in a red car pulled alongside him. The man claimed to be with the police and asked for his papers. "I knew right away that something was wrong, but it all happened very, very quickly," Abu Omar says. The operation had begun.
A moment after being asked to present his papers, Abu Omar felt the hands of two brawny men on his body. "They grabbed me from behind and dragged me into a white delivery van, then beat me," he recalls. "I thought they were going to kill me." He says he only got a quick glimpse of the "hulks," as he calls them. He says they quickly pulled a hat over his head and tied his hands with plastic cuffs. Abu Omar lay gasping in the van's cargo bay as it sped off, tires squeaking, in the direction of the U.S. air base at Aviano, about a two-hour drive from Milan.