US spy in rendition trial: 'I followed orders'

A former CIA agent on trial for the alleged kidnapping of a Muslim cleric and terror suspect in Milan acknowledged in an interview published Tuesday that he had a role in the operation but insisted he was only following orders.

Italy's Il Giornale daily published a rare interview with Robert Seldon Lady, the CIA Milan station chief at the time of the 2003 disappearance of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a street in the northern city.

"I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors," Lady was quoted as saying by Il Giornale. "It was not a criminal act. It was a state affair."

Lady and 25 other Americans, all but one identified as CIA agents by Italian prosecutors, are being tried in absentia in Milan charged with kidnapping Nasr as part of the agency's extraordinary rendition program of transferring suspects overseas for interrogation. It is the first trial in any country involving the CIA program.

Prosecutors say Nasr was transported in a van to a joint U.S.-Italian base in northern Italy, flown to a U.S. air base in Germany and onward to Egypt where he said he was tortured. Nasr has since been released without charge.

The CIA has declined to comment on the case. More