Report: CIA officer convicted in rendition case arrested abroad

A CIA officer wanted in Italy for kidnapping a Muslim cleric has been arrested in Panama and could face extradition, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

Former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison by an Italian court in 2009 for participating in the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr.

{mosads}Nasr was abducted by security officials while he was on the way to a mosque in Milan in 2003. Nasr said he was rendered to Egypt and tortured there.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime determined that Nasr’s imprisonment was “unfounded” and released him in 2007.

The high-profile case led to the first convictions issued for the practice of extraordinary rendition, which critics say led to terror suspects being detained in third countries, where they were tortured.

Lady was sentenced, along with 21 other CIA agents, a U.S. Air Force colonel and two Italian secret agents. An appeals court earlier this year gave Lady a nine-year sentence for the conviction.

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