Radical cleric details CIA abduction

Milan: In an account smuggled out of prison, a radical Muslim cleric has given a graphic account of his kidnap by CIA and torture in Egypt.

He was taken into custody by the CIA from this northern Italian city and flown to Cairo, where he was allegedly tortured for months with electric shocks and shackled to an iron rack known as "the Bride".

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, wrote an 11-page letter describing his 2003 abduction at the hands of the CIA and Italian secret service agents. He somehow transferred the document out of Egypt where he remains in custody and into the hands of Italian prosecutors who are investigating his disappearance.

The Milan public prosecutor's office on Thursday confirmed the authenticity of the letter, the existence of which was first reported by the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

The document has been submitted as evidence to defence attorneys representing 25 CIA officers, a US Air Force officer and nine Italian agents who have been charged with organising the kidnapping of Nasr, an Egyptian national, in February 2003.

A copy of the document, handwritten in Arabic, was obtained by The Washington Post. Undated, it reads like a homemade legal affidavit, outlining how Nasr was seized as he was walking to a mosque in Milan, stuffed into a van and rushed to Egypt in a covert operation involving spies from three countries.

"I didn't understand anything about what was going on," Nasr wrote. "They began to punch me in the stomach and all over my body. They wrapped my entire head and face with wide tape, and cut holes over my nose and face so I could breathe."

He was taken into a room by an Egyptian security official who told him that "two pashas" wanted to speak with him. "Only one spoke, an Egyptian," he recalled. "And all he said was, 'Do you want to collaborate with us?'" Nasr said the other "pasha" appeared to be an American. His captors offered a deal: They would allow him to return to Italy if he agreed to become an informant. Nasr said he refused. As a result, he said, he was interrogated and physically abused for the next 14 months in two Cairo prisons.

Italian prosecutors charge that the CIA and the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi collaborated to kidnap Nasr, who was known for preaching radical sermons in Milan.