Dozens guilty in CIA rendition

MILAN -- An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorism suspect, delivering the first convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program.

Human rights groups hailed the decision and pressed President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush administration's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to countries where torture was permitted.

The Obama administration ended the CIA's interrogation program and shuttered its secret overseas jails in January but has opted to continue the practice of extraordinary rendition.

The Americans, who were tried in absentia, now cannot travel to Europe without risking arrest.

Despite the convictions capping the nearly three-year trial, several Italian and American defendants - including the two alleged masterminds of the abduction - were acquitted, either because they had diplomatic immunity or because classified information was stricken by Italy's highest court.

The case has been politically charged from the beginning, with attempts to mislead investigators and derail the judicial proceedings once the trial was under way. But the Italian-American diplomatic relationship is unlikely to be hurt by the convictions.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the verdicts were the first convictions stemming from the rendition program.

Some are acquitted

Three Americans were acquitted, including the then-Rome CIA station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other diplomats formerly assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

Only two Italians were in the courtroom to hear the verdict, including Marco Mancini, the former No. 2 at Italian military intelligence, who embraced his lawyer outside the courtroom after he was acquitted.

Former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady received the top sentence of eight years in prison. The other 22 convicted American defendants, including a former Milan consular official, Sabrina De Sousa, and Air Force Lt. Col. Joseph Romano, each received a five-year sentence.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the Obama administration was "disappointed about the verdicts."

The State Department is being sued by De Sousa, a former State Department employee who denies she was a CIA agent and believes she should have been granted diplomatic immunity by U.S. officials. The judge's verdict, however, did not extend diplomatic immunity to consular officials charged.

Mark Zaid, the American lawyer for De Sousa, told The Associated Press in Washington: "The Italian conviction merely confirms the U.S. government's betrayal of our diplomatic and military representatives overseas."

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