Italy Denies Role in Cia Abduction

Silvio Berlusconi's outgoing government was yesterday forced to deny a role in an alleged CIA abduction after new evidence surfaced pointing to the involvement of a member of Italy's security forces.

Prosecutors looking into the disappearance of an Egyptian cleric had placed a Carabinieri warrant officer under formal investigation on suspicion of aiding and abetting a kidnapping. The officer, who has not been charged, was identified by name in some newspapers and in others by his alleged codename, Ludwig.

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, vanished in February 2003. He subsequently claimed, in an intercepted telephone call, that he had been seized and taken to Egypt, where he was jailed and tortured in the presence of US officials before being released. He then disappeared again. His temporary reappearance sparked an inquiry which, last June, led to a Milan judge ordering the arrest of 13 US intelligence agents accused of his abduction. The number of wanted Americans has since climbed to 22.

Last month the justice minister in Mr Berlusconi's rightwing government refused to forward requests for their extradition to Washington.

Yesterday's reports said the Carabiniere had admitted to prosecutors that, as part of the operation, he had agreed to stop Abu Omar on a Milan street and demand to see his papers. A witness told prosecutors the radical cleric then appeared to have been bundled into a van.

The prosecutors were said to have accepted that "Ludwig" was not obeying instructions from his Carabinieri superiors. But they are looking into whether he might have been moonlighting with Italy's military intelligence service, Sismi.