BRUSSELS, Belgium - The United States will refuse any Italian extradition request for CIA agents indicted in the alleged abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday.
"We've not got an extradition request from Italy. If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite U.S. officials to Italy," John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told journalists after meeting legal advisers to EU governments.
Milan prosecutors want the Italian government to forward to Washington their request for the extradition of the 26 Americans, mostly CIA agents. The previous government of Silvio Berlusconi refused, and Premier Romano Prodi's center-left government has indicated it would not press Washington on the issue.
The 26 are accused in the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from a Milan street in 2003.
Nasr allegedly was taken to Aviano Air Base near Venice, Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, and then to Egypt, where he was held for four years and, according to his lawyer, tortured. He has been freed by an Egyptian court that ruled his detention was "unfounded."
In a newspaper interview earlier this month, Justice Minister Clemente Mastella suggested the government would not seek the Americans' extradition, saying that the friendship with Washington needed to be safeguarded.
The decision on whether or not to forward an extradition request would normally be made by the Justice Ministry. But in this case, Mastella has said the decision will be made by the whole government because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The Americans all have left Italy; their trial opens in June.
It will be the first criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition program to secretly transfer terror suspects to third countries, where critics say they may have been tortured.
Five Italians, including the former chief of the country's military spy agency, also have been indicted in the case.
Bellinger criticized Italy for wanting to try Americans in absentia.
"It's ironic that the U.S. has been criticized for trying al Qaeda detainees without their being present at their trial and yet Europeans seem to be comfortable to try American officials in absentia," he said.
