Verdict in landmark rendition case: Guilty

MILAN, Italy, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- An Italian court Wednesday convicted 23 people of arranging a Muslim cleric's kidnapping from Milan and flight to Egypt, where he said he was tortured.

In announcing the convictions of 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel, Italian judge Oscar Magi said Wednesday three other Americans were covered by diplomatic immunity, The Washington Post reported.

The Americans were tried in absentia. A Milan prosecutor said the Italian Justice Ministry would consider later whether to seek the Americans' extradition from the United States.

The case is the only instance in which CIA operatives faced a criminal trial for extraordinary rendition, when terror suspects are seized in one country and transported to another without judicial oversight, the Post said.

Prosecutors said the Americans snatched Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a radical Egyptian imam, in 2003 from a Milan intersection in broad daylight. Nasr was flown to Cairo, where he said he was subject to electroshock and physical abuse, prosecutors said.

In his closing argument Wednesday, deputy prosecutor Armando Spataro said it was "unthinkable" the U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition should trump Italian law forbidding kidnapping.

"Here, Italian law rules, not American law or any other law," he said.