The US government’s double standard on extradition: CIA agents vs. Roman Polanski

[Hannah Bell]

It is worth considering the contrast between the refusal of the US government to cooperate with the extradition to Italy of 23 convicted CIA and Air Force kidnappers, and its determined effort to see filmmaker Roman Polanski returned to Los Angeles so that “justice can be served.”

The CIA agents (and one Air Force colonel), in collaboration with the Italian intelligence services, organized the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, on a Milan street in February 2003 and flew him to Egypt, where he was sadistically tortured over several years. Nasr was never charged with a crime or brought before any court of law...

Milan prosecutors provided evidence indicating that US involvement did not end with turning Nasr over to Egyptian authorities. The prosecutors produced cell phone and hotel reservation records revealing that Robert Seldon Lady, the CIA’s chief in Milan and one of the defendants in the case (who received an 8-year sentence in absentia), traveled to Cairo four days after Abu Omar was deposited there and stayed in the city for two weeks—no doubt, to see if the torture was bearing fruit.

Lady fled the villa in northern Italy to which he had retired when the investigation into the Abu Omar case became more serious. He is assumed to be living in the US. There is no clamor, however, in the American media that “Lady must face justice” for his serious crimes.

In February 2007, after a judge in Milan ordered the group of American agents to stand trial on kidnapping charges, the Bush administration announced its intention to protect the CIA personnel...

The Obama administration is continuing the Bush policy, expressing its “disappointment” with the Italian verdict and promising not to hand over the CIA criminals...

The US Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs (OIA), which would handle any Italian request for extradition of the CIA agents from the US, treated the Polanski matter in a quite different fashion...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pola-n06.shtml

[thunder rising]

1. It's that "we want to look ahead" BS that is going to cost Obama his Congress.

I don't think he'll have a problem, but I'm not so motivated to spend a lot of money anymore.

[Hannah Bell]

2. "ahead" -- to more of the same. i hear ya.