CAIRO, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- An Egyptian cleric believed to have been kidnapped by U.S. agents in Italy and handed over to Cairo, said he was tortured by the government.
Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, also known as Abu Omar al-Masri, told reporters Thursday he faced "the worst kind of torture in the Egyptian prisons," saying that his body was covered with scars and marks.
Nasr, 44, revealed his bruised arms and wrists which he said he received from electric shocks in Egyptian prisons, adding there are also bruises on his stomach and back but was "too embarrassed" to show them.
A state security court in Alexandria acquitted Nasr on Feb. 11 after declaring his detention illegal. He appeared in public for the first time on Thursday at a court hearing in Alexandria for a man charged with "harming Islam and insulting" Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Last week, an Italian court convicted 26 U.S. intelligence agents in Italy and five Italian collaborators on charges of illegally kidnapping Nasr from Milan in February 2003 and handing him over to the Egyptians.
Italian reports said Nasr fought in Afghanistan in the 1990s and recruited Arabs and Muslims to fight in Bosnia. Nasr said he would like to return to Italy to defend his rights and prove his innocence, adding he would like to keep the political asylum he was granted there in 2001.
He appealed to the Italian authorities not to "abandon me; I'm forbidden from leaving Egypt and I ask to return to Italy to prove my innocence."
