Former CIA station chief regrets “trail of evidence” in Italy abduction
July 2, 2009 Leave a comment
Hassan Nasr
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
For over two years, Italian justice has been after 26 Americans and five Italians who kidnapped a Muslim cleric suspected of terrorist ties and secretly flew him to Egypt, where he was secretly renditioned. The cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who was kidnapped while walking down a street in Milan, says that his Egyptian jailers held him for years without formal charges and tortured him severely. The Italians’ search for the 26 Americans, all of them almost certainly CIA personnel, has been met with a “no-comment” policy from Washington and the CIA. But now one of the 26, Robert Seldon Lady, has given a rare interview to Italy’s Il Giornale newspaper, in which he essentially admits that the CIA was behind the operation. Read more of this post
intelNews.org 
French intelligence agents posing as journalists abducted in Somalia
July 15, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment
Hotel Sahafi
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Foreign correspondents in Somalia have joined Reporters Without Borders (RWB) in condemning the alleged journalistic cover of two French intelligence agents, who were kidnapped on Tuesday in Somali capital Mogadishu. RWB director, Jean-Francois Julliard, said that if the allegations that the two French intelligence agents had pretended to be journalists are confirmed, it would be “shocking, because these are official agents on a mission for the French government, who have used the title of journalist as a cover”. In a telling move, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has refused to identify the two abductees, and has rejected calls to reveal the precise branch of the French government that sent them to Somalia. But the Ministry did admit today that the two Frenchmen were in the African country on “an official mission” to advise President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s crumbling Western-backed government in “security matters”. Speaking anonymously to the Agence France Presse news agency, a senior Somali government official revealed that the two abductees arrived in Mogadishu nine days ago in order to train “their counterparts in Somali intelligence agencies”. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with abductions, Africa, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, France, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hezb-ul Islam, Hizbul Islam, intelligence covers, Islamic Courts Union, Islamic Party (Somalia), Jean-Francois Julliard, Mogadishu (Somalia), Mohamed Abdi Gandi, News, Reporters Without Borders, Sahafi Hotel International, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, Somali Defense Ministry, Somali Ministry of the Interior, Somalia, The Party of Youth (Somalia)