Original Article Italians demand to try CIA suspects Prosecutor asks for extradition Tom Hundley and John Crewdson Chicago Tribune Jun. 29, 2005 12:00 AM MILAN, Italy - An Italian prosecutor will demand that the United States honor its treaty obligations with Italy and extradite more than a dozen suspected CIA operatives to stand trial on charges of kidnapping a radical imam two years ago. "We will ask for the extradition of all suspects named in the warrants," Armando Spataro, the deputy chief prosecutor in this northern Italian city, declared in an interview Tuesday. An Italian judge on Thursday signed warrants requested by Spataro for 13 suspected U.S. intelligence operatives, but the preparation of extradition requests is expected to take a few weeks. Prosecution officials also said they would enlist Interpol, the international police organization, to help track down any of the suspects outside the United States. Other suspects have not been charged. Spataro is expected to ask the court later this week for warrants accusing six other operatives of laying the groundwork for the abduction by following the imam's movements, but not of taking part in the abduction. The total charged could rise to 25, according to documents obtained by the Chicago Tribune. At least four suspects have not been identified by police, and some of the cellphones used in the operation were purchased by two U.S. diplomats posted to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Their names are also on the list of potential suspects. One of those diplomats was known to Milan police as a CIA officer, the documents said. An embassy spokesman did not return a call Tuesday, but an embassy operator said the two diplomats no longer worked there. Over the past two years, Spataro's investigators have garnered the names used by the suspects from hotel, rental car and cellphone records and painstakingly pieced together the operation in an 80,000-word report. What emerges from the report, which has not been made public, is a far more audacious covert operation than any previously known "rendition," the CIA's term for forcibly transporting a suspected terrorist from a foreign country to his or her homeland, usually for prearranged imprisonment and interrogation.