Rendition unravelled by the numbers, court told
Elisabetta Povoledo; 30/5/08
A top Italian terrorism investigator has told a court how easily an alleged CIA operation to kidnap a radical imam was unravelled: all that was necessary was to trace the mobile phones in use near the spot where the cleric disappeared on his way to a mosque in February 2003. “The evidence led us to believe that the operative group consisted of Americans,” Bruno Megale, the head of Milan’s anti-terrorism police force, told the court. “Some of the phones had called numbers in the United States; some had called the state of Virginia (where the CIA has its headquarters).” Testifying in the trial of 26 Americans, all but one identified as CIA operatives, Mr Megale described tracking massive amounts of mobile phone traffic to piece together Europe’s only prosecution of the Bush Administration’s much-disputed practice known as extraordinary rendition.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/world/rendition-unravelled-by-the-numbers-court-told-20080529-2ji1.html