Kidnapping in Milan The CIA on Trial

As propulsively readable as the best "true crime," is a potent reckoning with the realities of counterterrorism. In a mesmerizing page-turner, Steve Hendricks gives us a ground-level view of the birth and growth of international Islamist terrorist networks and of counterterrorism in action in Europe. He also provides an eloquent, eagle's-eye perspective on the big questions of justice and the rule of law. "In Milan a known fact is always explained by competing stories," Hendricks writes, but the stories that swirled around the February 2003 disappearance of the radical imam Abu Omar would soon point in one direction--to a covert action by the CIA. The police of Milan had been exploiting their wiretaps of Abu Omar for useful information before the taps went silent. The Americans were their allies in counterterrorism--would they have disrupted a fruitful investigation? In an extraordinary tale of detective versus spy, Italian investigators under the leadership of prosecutor Armando Spataro unraveled in embarrassing detail the "covert" action in which Abu Omar had been kidnapped and sent to be tortured in Egypt. Spataro--seasoned in prosecutions of the Mafia and the Red Brigades and a passionate believer in the rule of law--sought to try the kidnappers in absentia: the first-ever trial of CIA officers by a U.S. ally. An exemplary achievement in narrative nonfiction writing, 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 more savagery yet.

"Steve Hendricks is a gifted writer as well as a dogged sleuth, a combination that has turned this account--a journey through some of the darker human mazes of the war on terror--into one of those rarities, an important story, excellently told." Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

"Exceptionally well written and deeply reported--a gripping novel-like book that brilliantly reconstructs one of the more revealing episodes of the 'war on terror.'" Peter Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know

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 Milanis 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.

In Milan a known fact is always explained by competing stories, Hendricks writes, but the stories that swirled around the February 2003 disappearance of the radical imam Abu Omar would soon point in one direction to a covert action by the CIA. The police of Milan had been exploiting their wiretaps of Abu Omar for useful information before the taps went silent. The Americans were their allies in counterterrorism would they have disrupted a fruitful investigation In an extraordinary tale of detective versus spy, Italian investigators under the leadership of prosecutor Armando Spataro unraveled in embarrassing detail the covert action in which Abu Omar had been kidnapped and sent to be tortured in Egypt. Spataro seasoned in prosecutions of the Mafia and the Red Brigades and a passionate believer in the rule of law sought to try the kidnappers in absentia: the first-ever trial of CIA officers by a U.S. ally. An exemplary achievement in narrative nonfiction writing, 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 more savagery yet. "

The riveting true story of the CIA "snatch" of a radical imam in Italy.

A book so compelling it deserves to become one of the nonfiction classics of our time.

Steve Hendricks is a freelance reporter. He is the author of A Kidnapping in Milan and The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country, which was named to several best-of-the-year lists in 2006. He lives in Tennessee and Montana.