Italian spy master arrested over CIA kidnap

ROME, July 5 (Reuters) Police arrested a director of Italy's military intelligence agency today on suspicion of helping the CIA in the alleged kidnapping of a terrorism suspect in Milan, judicial sources said.

It is the first Italian official has been linked to the 2003 abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Nasr says he was flown to Egypt and tortured.

An Italian court has issued arrest warrants for 22 suspected US agents over the abduction, but no Italians had been sought until now.

The judicial sources, who asked not to be named ahead of an official announcement, said that police arrested Marco Mancini, director of a division of the Sismi military intelligence agency.

He was accused of collaborating in the kidnapping, the sources said. No further details were immediately available. Italian investigators had been wiretapping Nasr before his abduction and accuse him of having ties to al Qaeda and recruiting combatants for Iraq, according to court documents. They say the kidnapping broke Italian law and ruined a promising investigation.

REUTERS CH BD1446