This video from the USA says about itself:
A Debate on Torture: Legal Architect of CIA Secret Prisons, Rendition vs. Human Rights Attorney 1/3
28 March 2014
As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence feuds with the CIA over the declassification of its 6,000-page report on the agency’s secret detention and interrogation programs, we host a debate between former CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo and human rights attorney Scott Horton. This comes as the United Nations Human Rights Committee has criticized the Obama administration for closing its investigations into the CIA’s actions after September 11.
A U.N. report issued Thursday stated, “The Committee notes with concern that all reported investigations into enforced disappearances, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that had been committed in the context of the CIA secret rendition, interrogation and detention programmes were closed in 2012 leading only to a meager number of criminal charges brought against low-level operatives.” Rizzo served as acting general counsel during much of the George W. Bush administration and was a key legal architect of the U.S. interrogation and detention program after the Sept. 11 attacks. He recently published a book titled, “Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA.” Attorney Scott Horton is contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and author of the forthcoming book, “The Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Foreign Policy.”
Watch and share the full debate uninterrupted
These two videos are the sequels.
These videos examine a particular aspect of the “war on terror”, the illegal kidnapping by the CIA, and their detention and even torture on foreign soil.
Talking about videos: YouTube and corporations.
From Italian news agency ANSA:
2007-06-01 17:34
Baseball boss cited in CIA case
Red Sox jet allegedly used on first leg of ‘rendition’
MILAN – The part owner of a US baseball team has been cited as one of the prosecution witnesses in next month’s trial of CIA and Italian spies for abducting an Egyptian cleric suspected of terror offences.
Prosecutors on Friday called Boston Red Sox minority owner Philip Morse as one of their witnesses in the 2003 abduction of Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr, then head of Milan’s main mosque.
The prosecutors claim Morse’s Gulfstream jet was used to whisk Nasr from a US air force base in Italy to one in Germany, from where he was allegedly flown for interrogation to Egypt.
Nasr, who is also known as Abu Omar, was released from an Egyptian jail earlier this year, saying he had been tortured and raped.
The prosecution called some 130 witnesses including policemen who worked on the case and journalists who covered it, as well as leaders of Italy’s Muslim community including Nasr – who is still in Egypt and has been banned from leaving the country.
They also called Dick Marty, head of the European Parliament committee which earlier this year condemned the US’s policy – called ‘extraordinary rendition‘ – of flying terrorism suspects for interrogation in third countries with poor human rights records.
Among the other surprise witnesses was the former head of security at Italy’s biggest phone company, Telecom Italia, who is under investigation for acquiring confidential information on several prominent citizens.
The trial, which involves the former head of Italy’s military intelligence service, Niccolo’ Pollari, and several of his men, is due to start on June 8 in Milan.
The 26 CIA agents will be tried in absentia.
Baseball and steroids: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
I thoguht the CIA normally chartered Gulfstream – IVSP’s from Prudential Aviation for these flights. http://www.PrudentialAviation.com
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Thanks for reacting. Maybe, but also Morse’s Gulfstream, as he confirmed in the Boston Herald.
—————-
CIA snatch trial resumes
Both sides want Berlusconi and Prodi to testify
(ANSA) – Milan, April 16 2008 – A landmark Italian trial into the 2003 CIA abduction of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr from Milan resumed on Wednesday with prosecutors saying they had no objection to the last two Italian premiers being called.
Lawyers for former top spy Niccolo’ Pollari said they wanted to call current and past security and defence officials as well as outgoing premier Romano Prodi and newly re-elected Silvio Berlusconi, who was in power when the cleric was snatched and taken to Egypt where he says he was tortured.
Prosecutors said there was no need to call all the officials but the testimony of former centre-left leader Prodi and his centre-right predecessor and successor Berlusconi ”would certainly be interesting”. Pollari claims he can only prove he had nothing to do with the abduction if the premiers make key statements about state secrecy.
It is now up to the judge to rule whether the premiers should be called.
Before the case went to court, a preliminary hearings judge ruled in February 2007 that the premiers did not have to testify.
On Wednesday the judge threw out defence pleas for the trial to be moved and set May 14 for the next hearing.
Nasr’s wife, who is standing as civil plaintiff, will make her first appearance that day along with the Milan anti-terrorist police chief who investigated Nasr’s disappearance, Bruno Megale. After two lengthy suspensions, the trial started up again last month when a judge decided he didn’t need to wait for a ruling on a clash between state powers over Nasr’s abduction.
The Constitutional Court recently said it would start considering the arguments on July 8 – having originally been scheduled to discuss the issue at the end of January.
Judge Oscar Magi ruled that waiting for that verdict would breach Italy’s Constitutional requirement for a ”reasonable” trial length.
Magi also said that negotiations between the prosecutors and the government towards a possible solution no longer made the top court’s verdict critical.
Nine Italians including former military intelligence service SISMI chief Pollari are on trial with 26 CIA agents for Nasr’s abduction.
The case has pitted the Milan prosecutors against the government.
The government contends the prosecutors overstepped their Constitutional bounds, needlessly exposing agents and straining US-Italian security ties.
The prosecutors say the government acted illegitimately in trying to cover up actions which subverted Italy’s Constitution.
The trial – the keenly awaited first judicial examination of the controversial US practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ – opened in June 2007 but was adjourned two weeks later pending the Constitutional Court ruling.
Despite Prodi’s government taking the same tack as Berlusconi, the case has caused tensions between Italy and the US.
This was not helped by the trial opening hours before US President George W. Bush paid an official visit to Rome.
Last year the European Parliament (EP) rapped three countries including Italy for allowing the US to fly terror suspects to foreign locations where they are believed to have been tortured.
The Italian rapporteur in that EP inquiry, MEP Claudio Fava, has been pressing for the trial to proceed.
He presented a petition from 300 people including European magistrates, Italian civil rights leaders and ordinary citizens accusing the government of obstructing justice.
”We demand that the arbitrary use of state secrecy be reversed,” said the petition which was signed by well-known figures including historian Paul Ginsborg and Jewish cultural and rights activist Moni Ovadia.
The 300 claimed state secrecy ”has been brandished too many times by too many governments with the sole aim of depriving this country of its right to the truth”.
The 26 CIA agents, including ex-Rome chief Robert Seldon Lady and ex-Milan chief Jeff Castelli, were put on trial in absentia.
Pollari is on trial along with his former deputy Marco Mancini and five SISMI agents.
NASR CASE ‘PERFECT EXAMPLE OF RENDITION’.
Nasr, the former head of Milan’s main mosque, disappeared from the northern city on February 17, 2003.
Prosecutors say he was snatched by a team of CIA operatives with SISMI’s help and whisked off to a NATO base in Ramstein, Germany, on board a Gulfstream jet belonging to the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
From there, he was taken to Egypt to be interrogated under duress.
Nasr, who was under investigation in Italy on suspicion of helping terrorists, was released early last year from an Egyptian jail where he says he was tortured and threatened with rape.
He has demanded millions of euros in compensation from the Italian government.
The prosecution has called more than 100 witnesses including Berlusconi and Prodi.
It also called Dick Marty, head of a Council of Europe (CE) probe which concluded that 100 persons had been kidnapped by the CIA in Europe and rendered to a country where they might be tortured.
Marty has described Nasr’s abduction as a ”perfect example of extraordinary rendition”.
The report from Europe’s top human rights body claims the US made a secret deal with NATO in October 2001 to permit the CIA flights and also supply aid to countries threatened by terrorism.
The CE claims the CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2002 to 2005 with the knowledge of the two countries’ presidents.
Prosecutors in several other European countries are now probing CIA flights.
The US admits renditions but denies torture – although the legal status of admitted techniques such as waterboarding is controversial.
The US State Department described the EP report as ”unfair, inaccurate and distorted”.
The CIA was first granted permission to use rendition in a presidential directive signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and the practice grew sharply after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The US recently said it had suspended its rendition programme but news media have claimed it has been farmed out to other countries, especially in the Horn of Africa.
———
2008-05-14 12:51
Premiers called at CIA snatch trial
Berlusconi and Prodi to testify on state secrecy norms
(ANSA) – Milan, May 14 – Premier Silvio Berlusconi and his predecessor Romano Prodi have both been admitted as witnesses in a landmark Italian trial into the 2003 CIA abduction of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr from Milan.
Judge Oscar Magi also gave his green light to calling the ex-defense ministers at the time of the events to testify.
A request that the government officials testify was presented by lawyers for former top Italian spy Niccolo’ Pollari in order to prove their case that he had nothing to do with the abduction of Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.
In particular, they will be asked to confirm whether or not details on Nasr’s kidnapping were to be considered state secrets.
Nine Italians including former military intelligence service SISMI chief Pollari are on trial with 26 CIA agents for Nasr’s abduction.
The trial resumed last month, after two lengthy suspensions, when Magi decided he didn’t need to wait for a high court ruling on a clash between state powers over Nasr’s abduction.
According to the judge, waiting for that verdict would violate Italy’s Constitutional requirement for a ”reasonable” trial length.
The case has pitted the Milan prosecutors against the government.
The government contends the prosecutors overstepped their constitutional bounds, needlessly exposing agents and straining US-Italian security ties.
The prosecutors say the government acted illegitimately in trying to cover up actions which subverted Italy’s Constitution.
The trial – the keenly awaited first judicial examination of the controversial US practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ – opened in June 2007 but was adjourned two weeks later pending a Constitutional Court ruling.
Last year the European Parliament (EP) rapped three countries including Italy for allowing the US to fly terror suspects to foreign locations where they are believed to have been tortured.
The Italian rapporteur in that EP inquiry, MEP Claudio Fava, lobbied for the trial to proceed.
He presented a petition from 300 people including European magistrates, Italian civil rights leaders and ordinary citizens accusing the government of obstructing justice.
The 300 claimed state secrecy ”has been brandished too many times by too many governments with the sole aim of depriving this country of its right to the truth”.
The 26 CIA agents, including ex-Rome chief Robert Seldon Lady and ex-Milan chief Jeff Castelli, were put on trial in absentia.
Pollari is on trial along with his former deputy Marco Mancini and five SISMI agents.
NASR CASE ‘PERFECT EXAMPLE OF RENDITION’.
Nasr, the former head of Milan’s main mosque, disappeared from the northern city on February 17, 2003.
Prosecutors say he was snatched by a team of CIA operatives with SISMI’s help and whisked off to a NATO base in Ramstein, Germany, on board a Gulfstream jet belonging to the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
From there, he was taken to Egypt to be interrogated under duress.
Nasr, who was under investigation in Italy on suspicion of helping terrorists, was released early last year from an Egyptian jail where he says he was tortured and threatened with rape.
He has demanded millions of euros in compensation from the Italian government.
The prosecution has called more than 100 witnesses, including Dick Marty, head of a Council of Europe (COE) probe which concluded that 100 persons had been kidnapped by the CIA in Europe and rendered to a country where they might be tortured.
Marty has described Nasr’s abduction as a ”perfect example of extraordinary rendition”.
The report from Europe’s top human rights body claims the US made a secret deal with NATO in October 2001 to permit the CIA flights and also supply aid to countries threatened by terrorism.
The COE claims the CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2002 to 2005 with the knowledge of the two countries’ presidents.
Prosecutors in several other European countries are now probing CIA flights.
The US admits renditions but denies torture – although the legal status of admitted techniques such as waterboarding is controversial.
The US State Department described the EP report as ”unfair, inaccurate and distorted”.
The CIA was first granted permission to use rendition in a presidential directive signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and the practice grew sharply after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The US recently said it had suspended its rendition programme but news media have claimed it has been farmed out to other countries, especially in the Horn of Africa.
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Abductee’s wife seeks damages
Italy: The wife of a man who was allegedly tortured in Egypt after being snatched from a Milan street in 2003 as part of the CIA extraordinary rendition programme is seeking millions in damages.
Lawyers for Ghali Nabila told a Milan court on Wednesday that she deserved £4.7 million for her suffering.
Twenty-six US citizens, most of them CIA agents, are on trial in absentia, accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/world/The-world-in-brief183
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