By PHK
Has “Operation Clean Hands” struck again?
I was troubled – if that’s the right word - by news reports from Milan yesterday of an Italian judge’s arrest warrant for 13 American CIA officers and operatives charged with the seizure of an Egyptian cleric on a Milan street two years ago and his abduction to Egypt for further questioning concerning possible links to Al Qaeda. According to the New York Times today, the 42 year old cleric in question was under surveillance by Italian security at the time of his abduction and has not been heard of since 2004 when he, presumably was rearrested by the Egyptians.
This story I fear is the tip of an iceberg – or perhaps the beginning of a political avalanche - with potential negative implications for Prime Minister Berlusconi’s longevity in office not to mention George Bush’s questionable defense of the U.S. government’s rendition of terrorist suspects.
What's going on beneath the surface? What were the Italian judge’s motives in taking on this politically charged case? What did Berlusconi really know at the time of the abduction? And how did the Milan magistrate learn of the abduction to begin with - let alone obtain all the details needed for the arrest warrants – a few of which, at least, have been leaked to the media.
Is this an up-dated variant of the Milan magistrates’ “Operation Clean Hands” which toppled the five major Italian political parties in 1996 that had governed Italy since World War II and ushered in a leftist dominated Olive Branch coalition? Berlusconi, according to the book “The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy’s First Republic” by Stanton Burnett and Luca Mantovani, remained the magistrates’ prime target as late as 1998. If so, then is the Milan magistrate’s real target Berlusconi’s head in the Italian national elections slated for later this year?
Or is the target the United States – and revenge for the U.S. military’s murder of Italy’s security officer in Iraq earlier this year as his car sped towards Baghdad’s airport transporting the just released Italian journalist who had been taken hostage by Iraqi militants? Is this a kind of intelligence service tit-for-tat? After all, the Bush Administration never came clean on what really happened. Nor do I remember much about an apology. And the journalist, if I remember correctly, reports for a left-leaning or perhaps even Communist newspaper. So not only would Italian intelligence have been livid at the needless loss of one of its officers, but the reporter and her newspaper would have strongly opposed – and presumably still oppose - the Berlusconi-supported American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Or could the answer be both?
Note: The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy’s First Republic was published by Mantovani, Roman & Littlefield, Inc. and came out in paperback in 1998. My review of the book was published in the Foreign Service Journal, October 1998.