Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor wrote:

“After two years of wrangling to head off a case that centered around the Bush administration’s practice of abducting alleged terrorists abroad and sending them to friendly third states for interrogation, Italian prosecutors won a stunning victory on Wednesday, when 23 US intelligence agents were convicted in absentia by a Milan court for kidnapping.

“The practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ became common for the CIA after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, with hundreds of alleged militants abducted in Europe and Central Asia and elsewhere, and delivered to states like Algeria, Egypt, and Syria, where torture is often used against presumed enemies of the state. The US says it received assurances that torture would not be used. But the practice has been especially controversial in Europe, where roughly 100 Muslim men have been abducted.

“In a ruling that could damage US-Italian relations, Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan, was handed an eight-year sentence, and the 22 others — all believed to have been CIA employees or contractors — were given five-year sentences for the 2003 abduction from a Milan street of Muslim cleric Hassan Moustafa Osama Nasr. The convicted Americans were also ordered to pay Mr. Nasr and his wife $2 million. It was the first conviction for a rendition case. None of the men are in Italy, and their whereabouts have not been disclosed.”

Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, Daniel Tencer writing for the alternative news site, “The Raw Story,” describes the experience of Britain’s former ambassador in Uzbekistan with the CIA rendition program in that totalitarian country:

“The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

“Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

“‘I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,’ he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by The Real News Network. ‘I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.’”

Murray was dismissed as ambassador in 2004 after he documented and raised questions to his superiors about the CIA rendition program in Uzbekistan, the horrific torture taking place in prisons there and that the United States and Britain were relying on that torture to provide them information on suspected terrorists.

The British government first tried to convict Murray of 18 charges, ranging from issuing visas in exchange for sex to driving a car down a flight of stairs. He was cleared of all the charges but not before the details were leaked to the press. With his 20-year career with the British Foreign Service over, Murray continued to work to expose and end torture.

These two news items show how important it is that the U.S. investigation of torture and other war crimes that involve CIA officials and former White House officials be allowed to continue. It will likely be a very ugly can of worms, but it’s time we took a look.

Siddiqui, according to the official U.S. version of events, was arrested in Afghanistan on July 17, 2008, for “suspicious behavior.” On July 18, while still in custody, so that version goes, the 90-pound neuroscientist grabbed an unattended rifle and attempted to shoot the agents before she was wounded by gunfire.

Before news of her arrest in Afghanistan, no one, at least publicly, had heard of Siddiqui since she was disappeared by Pakistani intelligence forces in 2003 (She likely was picked up because U.S. intelligence agencies were saying she had terrorist links). A report in the Pakistani press said that Siddiqui and her kids, then 7, 5, and 6 months old, had been seen being detained by Pakistani authorities. Days later, a spokesman for Pakistan’s interior ministry and two unnamed U.S. officials confirmed that she was in custody and being interrogated. Several days later, however, Pakistani and American officials apparently changed their minds, saying it was unlikely she was being held.

Siddiqui’s mother, Ismet, has said that a few days after Siddiqui’s disappearance, a man on a motorcycle arrived at her house and told her Aafia was being held and that she should keep quiet if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again.

The treatment and fate of Siddiqui’s children, who are all U.S. citizens, is one of many troubling aspects of this case. The oldest, 11-year-old Ahmed, who had been detained with his mother in Afghanistan, was recently released from Afghan custody into his aunt’s care. Siddiqui has said that her younger son died in custody; her 5-year-old daughter remains unaccounted for.

Interestingly enough, on July 7, 2008, only a few weeks before Siddiqui’s arrest, Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist and patron of Cage Prisoners, a human rights organization, had sparked an uproar by calling a press conference in Islamabad to demand that the United States hand over an unidentified female prisoner being held at the U.S.-run Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

Ridley said the woman, whom she called the “Gray Lady of Bagram,” had been held in solitary confinement for years. And while no one knew for sure the identity of that prisoner, Ridley said she thought it was Siddiqui. Several former U.S. captives have also reported that a female prisoner, known only as prisoner 650, was being held in Bagram. And according to news reports, the former captives said she had lost her sanity, and cried all the time.

Ridley had written previously about “Prisoner 650″ and her four-year ordeal of torture and repeated rapes, saying that her cries had prompted the male prisoners to go on a hunger strike. And, at the Islamabad press conference, Ridley said she called her a “Gray Lady” because she was almost a “ghost, a specter whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her.”

Ridley is an award-winning journalist who was detained for 11 days by the Taliban in 2001 while on an assignment in Afghanistan. Months after her release she converted to Islam.

Siddiqui supporters plan a rally for the opening day of her trial in front of the U.S. District Court in New York City.

Recently, seven CIA directors, including three who are subjects of the probe, asked the president to reign in the attorney general, telling Obama that, “public disclosure about past intelligence operations can only help Al-Qaida elude U.S. intelligence and plan future operations.”

Obama has said that no one is above the law, and it is obvious that the CIA is worried about the very real prospects that several top officials may face war crimes charges if this investigation continues.

But in order for the United States to regain the respect and cooperation of the international community and for Americans to regain a sense of self-respect, the investigation has to be carried out and if officials are charged with war crimes, they must be put on trial.

ConsortiumNews.com has all the sordid details about the CIA directors and the letter to Obama in an article by Ray McGovern. He also writes about the involvement of government officials leading all the way up to former president George W. Bush.

McGovern should know what he is talking about. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years, working under nine CIA directors and seven presidents. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.