A Kidnapping in Milan The CIA on Trial

In 2003 the police of Milan were closing in on a network of Islamic terrorists-until the radical imam at the heart of their investigation suddenly disappeared. Abu Omar had been kidnapped by the CIA and sent to be tortured in Egypt. But the kidnappers were sloppy, and Amando Spataro, an Italian magistrate brave enough to stand up for the rule of law, traced, tried, and convicted them in absentia-the first-ever such convictions of CIA officers by a U.S. ally. Steve Hendricks's revelatory account also yields fascinating context: the CIA's role in Italian politics, the seedy history of Alexandrian tourism, the role of ex-Nazis in training Egyptian security forces, and the utterly ordinary backgrounds of the spies next door. A Kidnapping in Milan is at once a detective story, a history of the terrorist menace, and an indictment of the belief that man's savagery against man can be stilled with yet more savagery.