Italy's president on Friday pardoned a U.S. Air Force officer convicted of kidnapping an Egyptian Muslim cleric who was taken away for interrogation on a CIA "rendition" flight.

Such covert flights were among the tactics used to wage the "War on Terror" under the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush, after the 9/11 attacks. They have been condemned by human rights groups as a violation of international agreements.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said he had pardoned Colonel Joseph L. Romano, who was the only person not a member of the CIA among 23 Americans sentenced for the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in Milan in 2003.

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Romano's lawyer had requested the pardon. The clemency was granted because the United States and Italy are close allies that "share the common goals of promoting democracy and security" around the world, a statement from the president said.

The Egyptian cleric, also known as Abu Omar, was secretly flown to Egypt for interrogation, where he says he was tortured for seven months. He was a resident in Italy at the time of the abduction.

Italy was the first country to convict American nationals for their involvement in a rendition.

Romano and 21 others received seven-year jail terms for kidnapping, while the former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady was sentenced to nine years in jail.

All were tried in absentia and the Italian government has so far shown little indication it will ask for them to be extradited to serve the terms. No reason was given for why Romano was awarded clemency while the 22 CIA members were not.

U.S. President Barack Obama has tried to distance himself from heavy-handed intelligence tactics employed by the Bush administration, and ordered the CIA to close its long-term prisons in 2009.

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MILAN — Italy's former military intelligence chief was sentenced to 10 years in prison Tuesday for his role in the kidnapping of an Egyptian Muslim cleric in an operation organized by the United States.

An American former CIA station chief was this month sentenced in absentia to seven years in jail after imam Abu Omar was snatched from a Milan street in 2003 and flown to Egypt for interrogation during the United States' "war on terror."

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The Milan appeals court sentenced Niccolo Pollari, former head of the Sismi military intelligence agency, to 10 years in prison and his former deputy Marco Mancini to nine years.

The court also awarded a provisional 1 million euros ($1.3 million) in damages to the imam, the Ansa news wire reported, as well as 500,000 euros to the imam's wife.

Nicola Madia, a lawyer for Pollari, said he was disturbed by the decision and that his client would appeal to Italy's highest court. Pollari will not have to go to jail until the appeals process has been exhausted.

Madia said Pollari had not been able to defend himself properly because successive Italian governments had declared the case to be covered by state secrecy laws.

The sentences are part of the fallout from a campaign waged by then President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Abu Omar says he was tortured for seven months after being flown to Egypt in what was known as an "extraordinary rendition" operation. He was a resident in Italy at the time of his abduction.

Former CIA Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other American officials were convicted in their absence by the Milan appeals court for their part in the operation but are unlikely to serve their sentences.

Human rights groups have been fighting to expose heavy-handed tactics used by the CIA during the Bush administration.

Related:

Italian court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

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ROME — On the crisp morning of Feb. 17, 2003, Abu Omar, a Muslim cleric in Milan, was walking near his mosque when a group of men suddenly grabbed him, tossed him in the back of a van, drove him to NATO's Aviano Air Base and flew him to Cairo, where he claims he was tortured for seven months.

On Friday, a Milan appeals court sentenced a former CIA station chief to seven years in jail, convicting him in the cleric's kidnapping, which was part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. Two six-year sentences were also handed out to two American officials for the same crime.

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Jeff Castelli, a former CIA station chief in Rome, along with Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando, had been acquitted due to their dimplomatic immunity in the 2009 trial, while 23 other U.S. citizens were sentenced to prison in absentia.

Abu Omar, whose name is Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, is one of the most documented Egyptian terror suspects in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. Following his abduction and detention, he was released by an Egyptian court in 2007, and is now a free man.

None of the Americans has ever been in custody, as they fled Italy before their convictions. The Italian court wants them to be extradited, but Italy has always kept the lid of secrecy on the incident, and never formally asked the U.S. to hand them over. More importantly, Italy’s court decision in 2009 represented the first time any country held CIA operatives responsible for an extraordinary rendition, a practice that was widely tolerated in Europe.

While it is unlikely any of those convicted will face any time in prison, they now face arrests should they travel anywhere in Europe. In a strange twist of fate, it seems, the renditioners have now become the renditioned.

Updated at 6:15 p.m. to include response from NSC:

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday in favor of a German man who claims he was mistaken for a terrorist, then kidnapped and tortured by the CIA as part of the controversial extraordinary-rendition program.

The court ordered that Khaled El-Masri should be paid about $78,000 in damages by Macedonia, the European country where he says he was captured before being taken to a secret prison in Afghanistan known as the "Salt Pit."

James Goldston, lead lawyer on the case and executive director of the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, told NBC News that the ruling was significant because it was the first time a court had established "beyond reasonable doubt" that what El-Masri was saying had happened.

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He said that in light of the ruling the Obama administration should apologize to El-Masri, pay damages and launch a wide-ranging investigation into his case and others like it.

 

"Notably, the court found that the CIA’s treatment of Mr. El-Masri at the airport in Skopje, Macedonia in January 2004 amounted to torture. This judgment by the highest court in Europe represents an authoritative condemnation of some of the most objectionable tactics employed in the post-9/11 war on terror," Goldston said in a statement.

Macedonia's 'complete denial'
According to El-Masri, he was brutally interrogated at the CIA-run Afghan prison for four months after he was flown there from Macedonia.

The European court's ruling said El-Masri's account of his "alleged ordeal was very detailed, specific and consistent."

While Macedonia had issued a "complete denial," there was a "a wealth of compelling evidence supporting his [El-Masri's] allegations and rejecting the Government’s explanation as utterly untenable," it added.

The ruling said El-Masri’s account was supported by several factors including:

• aviation and flight logs;
• geological records of minor earthquakes he recalled during his detention in Afghanistan;
• sketches he drew of the prison where he was held;
• and scientific tests on his hair showing "he had spent time in a South Asian country and had been deprived of food for an extended period of time."

The ruling said the court "observes" that El-Masri was taken from his hotel in Skopje, Macedonia, to the city's airport where he was "beaten severely by several disguised men dressed in black."

"He was stripped and sodomized with an object. He was placed in a nappy and dressed in a dark blue short-sleeved tracksuit. Shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation, the applicant [El-Masri] was forcibly marched to a CIA aircraft … When on the plane, he was thrown to the floor, chained down and forcibly tranquillized," the ruling said.

"While in that position, the applicant was flown to Kabul (Afghanistan) via Baghdad," it added.

Read the court's full ruling (pdf)

Macedonian authorities said they would not comment until they are formally notified of the ruling, The Associated Press reported. Though the case focused on Macedonia, it drew broader attention because of how sensitive the CIA extraordinary renditions were for Europe.

They involved abducting and interrogating terror suspects without court sanction in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., under former President George W. Bush.

A 2007 Council of Europe probe accused 14 European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centers or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.

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U.S. Muslim travelers say they're still saddled with 9-11 baggage

'Huge victory for justice'

The White House referred NBC News' request for comment on the European court's ruling to the National Security Council press office, which responded later Thursday. 

"The United States government does not comment on what are alleged to be activities of the intelligence community," Caitlin Hayden, NSC deputy spokesperson told NBC in an email response. 

She pointed to three Executive Orders issued by President Barack Obama on his second full day in office on U.S. detention, interrogation and transfer policies directing that detainees in all circumstances be "treated humanely," that CIA detention facilities be closed "expeditiously," and that transfer practices "do not result in the transfer of individuals to face torture. The United States government is implementing those recommendations."

Goldston, who argued the case before the court, told NBC News that the United States had never commented on the claims officially and attempts to get a U.S. court to hear El-Masri’s case had failed.

He said he hoped the European court’s decision would prompt action in the U.S.

How I see America, from a former Gitmo prisoner

"The Obama administration should now apologize and acknowledge what the court has found, and undertake a more sweeping, intensive inquiry that what has been done to date," Goldston said.

"It’s incumbent on the administration to do that," he said, adding that the U.S. should also pay compensation to El-Masri.

Jamil Dakwar, head of the human rights program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the AP that the ruling was "a huge victory for justice and the rule of law."

He predicted "it will make it harder for the United States to continue burying its head in the sand" about accusations that its officials tortured suspects in the war on terrorism.

El-Masri was given a prison sentence in 2010 for assaulting the mayor of Neu-Ulm, Germany, and is due for release next year, Goldston said.

The court's rulings are binding on the 47 member states of the Council of Europe.

The Associated Press and NBC News' Kari Huus contributed to this report.

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President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he has seen no evidence that a scandal that led to the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus  harmed national security.

“I have no evidence at this point from what I’ve seen that classified information was disclosed that in  any way would have had a negative impact on our national security,” Obama said at a White House briefing.

Petraeus, a decorated four-star general who received widespread praise for the surge strategy in Iraq, resigned as CIA director on Friday, citing an extramarital affair.

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Numerous federal government officials have told NBC News that the married general had a relationship with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, 40, who authored “All In,” a book about Petraeus’ leadership philosophy.

Obama brushed aside questions about whether he felt he should have been notified sooner of the investigation of Petraeus.

“Obviously, there’s an ongoing investigation. I don’t want to comment on the specifics of the investigation, Obama said, “The FBI has its own protocols in terms of how they proceed. … I have a lot of confidence in the FBI.”

The president was not informed of the FBI investigation that revealed Petraeus’ affair until Nov. 8, one day before he accepted his resignation.

FBI investigators who looked into a series of anonymous threatening emails sent to Tampa, Fla., socialite Jill Kelley later determined they were authored by Broadwell, multiple government and law enforcement officials have told NBC News.

Investigators have looked into whether Broadwell violated cyber-harassment laws or improperly possessed classified information, and Obama indicated that the investigation was “ongoing.” Law enforcement officials say they have developed no evidence indicating that Petraeus improperly provided classified information to Broadwell.

Earlier on Wednesday, NBC News confirmed from a veteran senator that Petraeus will testify Thursday about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi before the Senate Intelligence Committee. 

The Thursday hearing will be the first formal congressional inquiry into the September attack that killed U.S. Ambassador in Libya Chris Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith and security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Petraeus is also scheduled to appear at a closed hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on Friday. 

 As FBI investigated Petraeus, he and Allen intervened in nasty custody battle

Republican lawmakers have criticized the administration’s evolving explanation of what triggered the Benghazi attack. Officials early on said it was a spontaneous reaction during a protest about an anti-Islamic film. Later, it was termed a planned terrorist attack.

Questions have also been raised about whether the consulate had adequate security and whether the State Department responded appropriately to requests for more protection.

Military analyst Col. Jack Jacobs (Ret.) said the sex scandal will affect the way Petraeus is questioned by Congress, because members were kept in the dark about the FBI inquiry that led to his resignation. 

Defense official fires back, denies Afghanistan commander exchanged 'inappropriate' emails

“It will be interesting to see what tenor it takes and what the senators and congressmen, assuming he gets before both houses, have to say before talking to him. As you know, these hearings have a tendency to be less a question and answer period than it is an opportunity for the members to vent their spleen or talk about what they want to, so that part will be very, very interesting,” Jacobs said.   

“In terms of extracting real information about what actually took place and what role the CIA had in what took place in Benghazi, I believe that investigation will determine that they had no role, that by the time the CIA could do anything, it was all over.” 

NBC's Michael Brunker contributed to this report.

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The WikiLeaks website began publishing on Thursday what it said were more than 100 U.S. Defense Department files detailing military detention policies in camps in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in the years after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets.

In a statement, WikiLeaks criticized regulations it said had led to abuse and impunity and urged human rights activists to use the documents, to be released over the next month, to research what it called "policies of unaccountability."

The statement quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying: "The 'Detainee Policies' show the anatomy of the beast that is post-9/11 detention, the carving out of a dark space where law and rights do not apply, where persons can be detained without a trace at the convenience of the U.S. Department of Defense."

"It shows the excesses of the early days of war against an unknown 'enemy' and how these policies matured and evolved," it said, and led to "the permanent state of exception that the United States now finds itself in, a decade later."

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A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in London said it had no immediate comment.

In January, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said the United States was still flouting international law at Guantanamo Bay by arbitrarily and indefinitely detaining individuals.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in 2001 when militants from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

Then President George W. Bush set up a detention camp at a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo in Cuba after U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan to expel al-Qaida following the September 11 raids. Of the 779 men held there, 167 remained as of mid-September 2012.

Interrogation
WikiLeaks said a number of documents it was releasing related to interrogation of detainees, and these showed direct physical violence was prohibited.

But it added the documents showed "a formal policy of terrorizing detainees during interrogations, combined with a policy of destroying interrogation recordings, has led to abuse and impunity".

A number of what can only be described as "policies of unaccountability" would also be released, it said.

One such document was a 2005 document "Policy on Assigning Detainee Internment Serial Numbers," it said.

"This document is concerned with discreetly 'disappearing' detainees into the custody of other U.S. government agencies while keeping their names out of U.S. military central records — by systematically holding off from assigning a prisoner record number," the WikiLeaks statement said.

WikiLeaks did not elaborate. But human rights activists say that after the September 11 attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency used "black sites" in friendly countries to interrogate and sometimes torture suspected militants beyond the reach of normal legal protections.

Playing on 'love' and 'fear'
While Bush acknowledged the existence of a CIA program for detaining and questioning militants outside of the United States in speech in September 2006, the government has never publicly confirmed the location of the sites.

Some of the policies applied to other countries' personnel, Wikileaks said, citing what it said was a 13-page interrogation policy document from 2005 for U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq.

It said the document detailed techniques such as the "Emotional Love Approach: Playing on the love a detained person has for family, homeland or comrades". In contrast, in the "Fear Up (Harsh)" approach, it said "the interrogator behaves in an overpowering manner with a loud and threatening voice in order to convince the source he does indeed have something to fear; that he has no option but to co-operate."

The documents released on Thursday date from 2001 to 2004.

Assange, whose website previously angered the United States by releasing thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, has been holed up inside Ecuador's embassy in central London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations. He denies wrongdoing.

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A human rights organization says it has collected evidence of two previously unreported cases in which U.S. agents used waterboarding or a similar harsh interrogation technique on Libyan militants held by American forces in Afghanistan. 

The 154-page report by Human Rights Watch also paints a more complete picture of Washington's close cooperation with the regime of Libya's former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. handed over to Libya the Islamist opponents of Gadhafi that it detained abroad with only thin "diplomatic assurances" that they would not be mistreated, and several of them were subsequently tortured in prison, Human Rights Watch said. 

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The report features interviews by the New York-based group with 14 Libyan dissident exiles. They describe systematic abuses while they were held in U.S.-led detention centers in Afghanistan -- some for as long as two years -- or in U.S.-led interrogations in Pakistan, Morocco, Thailand, Sudan and elsewhere before the Americans handed them over to Libya.

"Not only did the U.S. deliver his (Gadhafi's) enemies on a silver platter, but it seems the CIA tortured many of them first," said Laura Pitter, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. 

"The scope of Bush administration abuse appears far broader than previously acknowledged and underscores the importance of opening up a full-scale inquiry into what happened," she added. 

UK spies to face criminal inquiry over Libya

The documents, which were found in once-secret archives that became public during the Libyan revolution, included classified correspondence between top Libyan officials and officials from the CIA and Britain's spy agencies MI5 and MI6. 

They illustrate how, between late 2003 when Gadhafi agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction programs, and the 2011 Libyan revolution, Gadhafi and Western intelligence agencies quietly cooperated in battling Islamic militants. 

Waterboarding is a form of simulated drowning that President Barack Obama and human rights activists have condemned as torture. 

Britain, U.S. defend actions
U.S. and British officials defended their governments' actions. 

"It can't come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats. That is exactly what we are expected to do," said Jennifer Youngblood, a CIA spokeswoman. 

"The context here is worth revisiting. For example, by 2004, the U.S. government had convinced Gadhafi to renounce Libya's WMD programs and to help stop those terrorists who were actively targeting Americans," Youngblood said. 

A spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office said: "The government has been clear that it stands firmly against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. We do not condone it, nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf. 

"In addition, we have published the Consolidated Guidance which provides clear directions for intelligence officers and service personnel dealing with foreign liaison services regarding detainees held overseas," the spokesman said. 

Slideshow: Moammar Gadhafi through the years 

Some of the other nations that Human Rights Watch alleged to be U.S. collaborators in these operations are the Netherlands, Pakistan, China, Malaysia, Morocco and Sudan. 

The most dramatic, and potentially controversial, of the report's 14 case studies relates to alleged waterboarding. 

Human Rights Watch said that testimony from former detainee Mohammed Shoroeiya about how he was allegedly waterboarded repeatedly by U.S. interrogators was "detailed and credible."

Shoroeiya claimed he had been waterboarded while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, and that a doctor was present during the interrogation sessions, the group said. 

It said that a second former Libyan detainee, Khalid al-Sharif, described how he was subjected to a "similar type of treatment," though this did not involve being strapped to a board. 

Libyan rebels find album filled with photos of his 'darling' Condoleezza Rice

Human Rights Watch said both detainees claimed that they were hooded and had ice water poured over their noses and mouths until they felt like they were suffocating -- the sensation associated with waterboarding. 

Claims contradict Bush, CIA
The accounts by the Libyan detainees, one-time members of a militant faction called the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, contradict claims by former President George W. Bush, former CIA director Michael Hayden and other U.S. officials that waterboarding was only used on three militants in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks -- none of them Libyan. 

U.S. officials expressed skepticism about the waterboarding allegations. And there are apparent differences in how the Libyans describe their treatment and the waterboarding procedures used in three cases that U.S. authorities have confirmed -- those of alleged al-Qaida militants Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. 

In those cases, official investigations reported, the interrogation subjects were doused repeatedly, but in short bursts, with bottled water. 

Slideshow: Life goes on in Guantanamo

"The agency has been on the record that there are three substantiated cases in which detainees were subjected to the waterboarding technique," the CIA's Youngblood said. 

"Although we cannot comment on these specific allegations, the Department of Justice has exhaustively reviewed the treatment of more than 100 detainees in the post-9/11 period -- including allegations involving unauthorized interrogation techniques — and it declined prosecution in every case," she added. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The Justice Department announced Thursday that it has ended a lengthy investigation into the CIA's interrogation and treatment of prisoners without bringing any criminal charges. 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the investigation into the deaths of two suspected terrorists  who died in CIA custody -- one in Iraq and another in Afghanistan -- was ended without charges because "the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt." 

The two cases include the highly publicized case of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in a shower stall at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq while in CIA custody.  Several U.S. soldiers, who were photographed with al-Jamadi's body, packed in ice inside a body bag, were later prosecuted and convicted in military courts for prisoner abuse. 

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The investigation spanned more than four years. It began with an investigation into the CIA's destruction of videotapes of aggressive interrogations of terrorist suspects, but was later expanded to include the deaths of the two detainees. 

In all the Justice Department investigated the treatment of 101 detainees who been held in U.S. custody since 9/11. 

CIA Director David Petraeus issued a statement thanking everyone at the CIA who supported the Justice Departments investigations.  

In an apparent effort to put the incidents and investigations to rest, Petraeus added, "As intelligence officers our inclination of course is to look ahead to the challenges of the future rather than backwards at those of the past."

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