Milan, Italy ? An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of a group of CIA agents who investigators believe kidnapped a radical Egyptian imam from the streets of Milan and bundled him off to Cairo, where he said he was tortured.

As part of the probe, Italian police Thursday night raided the Italian home of an American man identified in arrest warrants as the former CIA station chief here and confiscated a computer, disks and other documents, judicial sources said.

The warrants name 13 American agents from a group of 19 men and women who authorities here believe pursued and then snatched Hassan Osama Nasr, a radical cleric better known as Abu Omar, nearly 2 1/2 years ago. Officials, who announced Friday that warrants had been issued, said none of the agents are in Italy any longer and that no one was taken into custody.

The Abu Omar case is an example of an “extraordinary rendition,” a controversial practice employed by U.S. authorities against suspected terrorists with increasing frequency since the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. counter-terrorism agents seize and transport a suspect in one country to a third country without seeking court permission. Human rights organizations say treatment of the suspect in the third country can be brutal.

Italy is one of three European countries, along with Sweden and Germany, that are examining alleged renditions on their soil. However, it is highly unusual for a country friendly to the United States to attempt to prosecute its secret agents.

The suspected agents were identified, with names and addresses, through cellular phone records and hotel and rental-car receipts amassed from the weeks they were in Milan preparing and executing the operation, three officials said in interviews during the last several days.

U.S. assistance sought

“We will be asking for judicial assistance from both Egyptian and . . . U.S. authorities,” Milan’s top prosecutor, Manlio Claudio Minale, said in announcing the arrest orders.

Another leading prosecutor, Armando Spataro, opened the Italian investigation earlier this year and sought and secured the arrest warrants. “I think it’s nearly impossible to arrest anyone,” Spataro said in an interview. “The important thing is to get to the truth.”

He said he hoped to be able to ask for the extradition of the agents and to take depositions from witnesses in the United States.

It was not clear to what extent the operation was approved by the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a staunch U.S. ally. Even if Berlusconi’s government gave its blessing, the Italian judiciary frequently acts independently and government approval of the operation would not necessarily have stopped prosecutors from pursuing the case.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome and the State Department declined comment on the case Friday. Adam Ereli, deputy State Department spokesman, said the government would not comment in the future on any aspect of the case. The CIA in the past has defended the practice, saying it receives assurances from the third countries that the suspects will be treated well.

A ‘solid case’

Several U.S. officials said the case was extraordinarily sensitive, given Washington’s close working relationship with Italy on many issues. One former U.S. intelligence official said the prospect of Italy issuing arrest warrants had been discussed privately within the agency for months, and that CIA officials in Italy were told six months ago to clear out in anticipation of possible legal action.

A current U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Italian warrants would likely be considered valid by Europol, meaning that the agents could be arrested anywhere in Europe.

“We have a very solid case,” a senior Italian justice official said.

“I realize this won’t change U.S. policy, but it will be embarrassing, at the least,” said another Italian law enforcement official familiar with the case.

Abu Omar

Details of the Abu Omar case were first reported in the Los Angeles Times on March 3. Spataro requested arrest warrants on March 22, and Judge Chiara Nobile finally issued them late Thursday.

The abduction of Abu Omar forced Italian authorities to abort an extensive case they were building against him. His arrest was imminent at the time, they said, and formal charges against him are pending.

Italian authorities suspected Abu Omar of helping to build a terrorist network in Europe, of recruiting volunteers to fight in Iraq on the eve of the U.S. invasion, and of possibly plotting a bombing. He was a veteran of wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Afghanistan and was using his pulpit in Milan to raise money for the jihadist cause, Italian officials said, citing information from wiretaps, including one at a mosque where he preached.

According to court papers, he was recorded in numerous conversations with other terror suspects who have since been prosecuted. In one, he is heard praising a man later accused of recruiting suicide bombers for his success in reaching out to “the youth.”

Abu Omar’s disappearance angered several officials who felt they had always cooperated fully with the U.S. war on terrorism, only to be trampled on in this operation.

“Kidnapping Abu Omar was not only a crime against the state of Italy, but also it did great damage to the war on terrorism,” Spataro, the prosecutor, said. “We could have continued the investigation and found evidence on other people. He would be on trial by now instead of missing.”

As part of the investigation into the abduction, Italian law enforcement officials put together an extensive dossier on the team of men and women who spent several days tracking Abu Omar and who then intercepted him as he walked to Milan’s Viale Jenner mosque on Feb. 17, 2003. The agents surrounded and subdued him, then shoved him into a minivan and sped away, witnesses have told investigators.

The group that captured Abu Omar numbered 13, while six other men and women were involved in surveillance and setting up the abduction, law enforcement officials said. All 19 were American, and many if not all were thought to be CIA agents, the officials said.

Station chief

The officials acknowledged that many of the names and much of the information may be false. But one name was very familiar to them: The then-station chief of the CIA in Milan, an agent with whom senior Italian police officials had frequently worked and socialized. The official had held a consular position at the U.S. mission in Milan.

Police on Thursday raided a home of the American near Turin, seizing papers and a computer. Judicial sources said the man has left U.S. government service and now works globally, but that his wife was present.

The people who spirited Abu Omar away took him to the American side of the joint U.S.-Italian Aviano Air Base, then flew him in a CIA-contracted Learjet to the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where they transferred him to a Gulfstream executive jet for the last leg of the journey to Cairo, Italian prosecutors said.

Some of the cell phone calls tracked by the Italians were made by the U.S. agents to Aviano.

Once in Cairo, Abu Omar later told associates, he was put in prison and beaten, and given electrical shocks on his genitals. Italian investigators say they find those claims credible.

Within a few weeks of his disappearance, Italian police asked U.S. officials for information on his whereabouts and were told he was in a Balkan country, the prosecutor’s office said.

The following year, Abu Omar was released and telephoned his wife in Milan. Italian investigators had not discontinued their wiretapping of his home and only then were able to learn where he was.

They quoted him as saying he had been released because of his deteriorated physical condition.

“He had been detained for a long time and had undergone physical violence to make him respond to his interrogators’ questions,” the prosecutors’ office said.

Egyptian police quickly re-arrested him, Italian officials said. His location and condition today are unclear.