An Italian judge effectively froze on Monday the trial of US and Italian spies charged with kidnapping a terrorism suspect in Milan in 2003 and then flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
The trial of seven Italians and 26 Americans the latter, all believed to be CIA agents, in absentia is the first anywhere over the practice of "extraordinary rendition", whereby terrorism suspects are secretly transferred to third countries.
Judge Oscar Magi said the criminal trial should wait until Italy's highest court ruled whether Milan prosecutors had broken state secrecy rules when pursuing the high-profile case, as Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government contends. His decision was applauded by lawyers representing the spies. The government has requested the Constitutional Court consider annulling the proceedings altogether.
Magi adjourned the criminal trial until October 24 to give the high court time to decide whether to allow the case, which has embarrassed Rome and Washington. The United States has said it will refuse any request by Italy to extradite the accused.
"If it agrees with the request by the prime minister's office, the Constitutional Court would annul the trial," said lawyer Titta Madia, who represents former Italian spy chief Nicolo Pollari, one of the accused. Prosecutors say a CIA-led team, with the help from Pollari's SISMI military intelligence agency, grabbed Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr off a Milan street in 2003.
Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was then driven to a military base in northern Italy and flown to Egypt. There, Nasr says he was tortured under interrogation with electric shocks, beatings, rape threats and genital abuse.
The decision is a setback for prosecutors, who say the Prodi government is exerting undue influence in order to get "uncomfortable" cases like this put on ice. The trial only opened on June 8, and had not yet entered into the merits of the accusations by presenting evidence and witnesses that critics say would expose international espionage secrets.
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