Antonella Ciancio for Reuters reports: A Milan judge on Friday ordered 26 Americans, most of them believed to be CIA agents, to stand trial with Italian spies for kidnapping a Muslim cleric and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.
Among those indicted for the 2003 abduction are the former heads of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Rome and Milan, and the former head of Italy's SISMI military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari, defense lawyers said.
The trial of the Americans will almost certainly be in absentia, since Washington is not expected to hand them over.
The trial, set to begin on June 8, will be the first criminal case over "renditions" -- one of the most controversial aspects of U.S. President George W. Bush's war on terrorism. Colleen Barry for AP additionally reports: Prosecutors elsewhere in Europe are moving ahead with cases aimed at the CIA program.
This week, the Swiss government approved prosecutors' plans to investigate the flight that allegedly took Nasr over Swiss airspace from Italy to Germany.
A Munich prosecutor recently issued arrest warrants for 13 people in another alleged CIA-orchestrated kidnapping, that of a German citizen who says he was seized in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonia border and flown to Afghanistan.
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