03/19/2007

Abu Omar's Arrival in Cairo

"Work For Us as a Spy -- or Rot in Jail"

Abu Omar reports he was interrogated immediately after his arrival in Cairo. When the imam refused to work as an informer in Milan, he was tortured.

"When the jet plane landed, I was still dazed. The flight took seven hours -- but that's just an estimate. My body felt completely stiff. The circulation in my arms and legs had been cut off by the plastic cuffs, but I was still in severe pain. Someone cut through the cuffs around my legs and led me down a set of stairs. I heard a voice from below. A man called out to me in Arabic to come down. I knew from the accent that I was in Egypt."

Investigators now know from flight data that the CIA jet was a Gulfstream jet plane with the registration code "N85VM" which had flown from the US military air base in Ramstein, Germany to Cairo.

"I was interrogated on the first day. First a doctor came and tended to my injuries. He ripped the duct tape from my face brutally. Someone took photographs as well. I could hardly see anything, since the light blinded me after the many hours spent with tape over my eyes. A man in uniform yelled at me not to look at him and and told me to stare at a white wall. Then a hat was pulled over my face and I was taken to an interrogation room."

Whether US citizens remained in Cairo after the plane landed is still unclear. After evaluating tens of thousands of mobile phone conversations, the investigators know that Robert Seldon Lady, the CIA's bureau chief in Milan, arrived in Cairo five days after Abu Omar was taken there. It remains unclear whether he participated in interrogations. He and 25 CIA employees are among the accused in the Milan trial. Today Seldon claims he was opposed to the Milan operation but that others in the CIA overruled him.

"During the first interrogation, immediately after my arrival, I had the feeling many people were in the room. Only one person spoke. He said high-ranking Egyptian intelligence agents were in the room. He called them "bashas." They wanted to know whether I was prepared to return to Milan and work as an informer in the fundamentalist Islamist scene there. If I said yes, they would fly me straight back to Milan. If not, I would rot in prison here. I was told to make a decision. I immediately turned down the offer. I wasn't allowed to say anything more. They placed me in solitary confinement. The room was about 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters (5 feet by 5 feet) in size, without a toilet. They hung me from handcuffs on the wall and locked the door. I knew they wanted to detain me for a long time and break my will by torturing me. They always do it like that here."

The Egyptian government has yet to comment on Abu Omar's arrival in Cairo. During the last few years, researchers working for human rights organizations have identified at least 33 terrorism suspects that were abducted to Egypt. Anonymous intelligence agents quoted in media reports speak of a total of about 100 abducted persons. Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif once told a group of US reporters he knew about "60 or 70" cases in which US agents abducted Egyptians abroad and brought them to Egypt. He didn't mention any names.

Officially, torture is not used in Egypt. Human rights organizations accuse the government every year of employing torture methods during interrogations, however.

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