Original Article Evidence against CIA agents is multiplying, Italians say Tracy Wilkinson Los Angeles Times Dec. 30, 2005 12:00 AM ROME - The secret agents who captured Abu Omar weren't very secret. In the days surrounding their abduction of the radical Egyptian cleric on a Milan street three years ago, they chatted openly on their cellular phones, ran up huge bills at luxury hotels and even managed to let their rental cars be photographed by traffic cameras as they drove illegally through pedestrian walkways. The case became the most well-documented example of a secret CIA practice aimed at hunting down terror suspects. But Italy's efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice have stalled, a casualty of political stonewalling, international intrigue and public apathy. Italy has issued Europe-wide arrest warrants for the alleged captors of the cleric, whose full name is Hassan Osama Nasr: 22 CIA operatives, including the former station chief in Milan. Italian prosecutors say Abu Omar, whom investigators suspected of heading a terrorist network, was transported by U.S. agents to an Egyptian prison, where he has said he was tortured. The operation in Milan was one piece in what is now known to be the much wider use of European soil and airspace by U.S. intelligence services for the possibly illegal detention of dozens of suspects, involving hidden prisons and clandestine flights in and out of European airports. The men and women who grabbed Abu Omar as he walked to a Milan mosque in February 2003 are long gone. Last week, another court expanded the warrants to the European Union, so the suspects now risk arrest anywhere in the 25-nation bloc. State prosecutors based in Milan, who are pressing the case, believe the paper and electronic trail left behind by the CIA operatives provides a remarkable trove of evidence, especially for an operation that was supposed to be secret. And that is where the case has stalled. The pro-U.S. government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is refusing to forward the extradition requests and instead asked for more documentation, a highly unusual request that prosecutors regard as a delaying tactic. Berlusconi has denied that his government knew about or authorized the abduction, even as former CIA officers in Washington said the operation was conducted with Italian government cooperation. The ease and openness with which the operatives acted in Milan suggests they knew they had the green light from Italian authorities. Among other activities, they ran up bills totaling more than $150,000 at some of Milan's best hotels. Abu Omar's captors took him to the U.S.-run side of the Aviano Air Base in northern Italy; from there he was flown in a CIA-contracted Learjet to the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he was transferred to a Gulfstream executive jet for the last leg of the journey to Egypt, according to Italian investigators and court documents. He has told friends and family that he was questioned for hours at Aviano and tortured in prison in Egypt by interrogators who beat him and used electrical shocks on his body. Phone records suggest that one of the CIA agents, former Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady, may have been present in Egypt during the torture, prosecutors say. They have forwarded a request asking U.S. authorities to question Lady and his boss, the Rome CIA station chief, about his presence in Egypt.