US detains 860 children in Iraq

October 11, 2007
US detains 860 children in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The US military is holding nearly 25,000 people in its prisons in Iraq, 860 of whom are under the age of 16, the general in charge of their detention said on Wednesday.

Eighty-three percent of inmates are Sunnis and 16 percent are Shiite, General Douglas Stone told a press conference in Baghdad.

Egyptians, Iranians, Saudis and Syrians number among 280 foreign nationals imprisoned by the US military in Iraq, he said.

In Italy, trial of CIA agents begins

June 9, 2007
In Italy, trial of CIA agents begins

MILAN, ITALY — As President Bush headed for Italy on Friday, a Milan court opened the trial of a group of CIA agents accused of kidnapping a radical Egyptian cleric — the first legal prosecution of one of the administration's most controversial counter-terrorism tactics.

Twenty-six American defendants, including two CIA station chiefs and an Air Force colonel, are being tried in absentia in the 2003 abduction from a Milan sidewalk of the cleric known as Abu Omar.

Marine gets 8 years for kidnapping and murder

February 17, 2007
Marine gets 8 years for kidnapping and murder

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - A Marine who said he never fired a shot in the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man was sentenced Saturday to 8 years in military prison — the longest sentence yet in the case.

Lance Cpl. Robert B. Pennington, 22, also was reduced in rank and given a dishonorable discharge during the sentencing hearing at the Camp Pendleton Marine base.

13 CIA operatives charged

February 1, 2007
13 CIA operatives charged

BERLIN - The CIA's clandestine program of abducting terror suspects and taking them to secret sites for interrogation unraveled further Wednesday as German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 agency operatives in the kidnapping of a German citizen in the Balkans in December 2003.

The case is the second in which European prosecutors have filed charges against CIA employees involved in counterterrorism operations. Italian prosecutors have charged 25 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force officer with kidnapping a radical cleric on a Milan street in 2003 and taking him to Cairo, where he claims he was tortured.