I hate it when CIA agents lose their Italian villas…

U.S. spy says just followed orders in Italy kidnap

ROME (Reuters) – A former U.S. spy at the center of a kidnapping trial in Italy appeared to acknowledge a role in the abduction of a Muslim cleric but said he was only following orders, according to a rare interview published on Tuesday.

Robert Seldon Lady is one of 26 Americans, almost all believed to have been working for the CIA, who are accused along with Italian spies of grabbing a terrorism suspect off the streets of Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt.

There, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr says he was tortured and held for years without charge.

“I’m not guilty. I’m only responsible for carrying out orders that I received from my superiors,” Lady, the CIA’s Milan station chief at the time, was quoted as telling Il Giornale newspaper when asked whether he participated in the abduction.

He said he committed no crime because it was a “state matter.” “I console myself by reminding myself that I was a soldier, that I was in a war against terrorism, that I couldn’t discuss orders given to me.”

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