Free Republic

ROME (Reuters) - The Italian government denied on Wednesday reports that its secret services passed fake documents to the United States to help bolster claims about Baghdad's pre-war nuclear ambitions. Italian newspaper La Repubblica has been running daily articles since Monday alleging that Sismi intelligence officials helped pass-off forged documents that accused Iraq of trying to buy 500 tons of "yellowcake" uranium from Niger. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office said in a statement the government and Sismi had no "direct or indirect role in the fabrication and the transmission of the 'fake dossier on Niger uranium."' La Repubblica accuses Sismi,...

A Muslim cleric has claimed to have been tortured with electric shocks, left in a cell where rats crawled on him and threatened with rape after he was allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street by CIA agents three years ago.The claims of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, appeared in an affidavit provided to Milan prosecutors investigating his alleged abduction in February 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported yesterday. Prosecutors say that the cleric, who was formerly suspected of links to terrorism, was driven to the Aviano military air base and flown via Germany to...

Here is an english translation from french. http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/12/1/12030/8816#2 Paris - The Direction Générale de la Sécurité extériéure (Dgse) is the French counter-espionage abroad. Alain Chouet was Vice-Director. Today he is enjoying his retirement in the country but - up to the summer 2002 - he was the man who handled the `Nigergate' on behalf of Paris. He says: "I know what happened. When it happened. How it happened. I guided the French intelligence in this affair. I made the decisions. I communicated and exchanged with the Americans all information concerning this case. At the time I was head of the...

For the second time in just over a month, the Italian government has asked a top court to stop a pending trial of 26 Americans, most of them CIA agents, in a case that could provide the first public examination of a secret U.S. program that targeted alleged terror suspects from foreign lands. The State Committee of Lawyers, a government advisory board, was asked to review the procedures that led to indictments handed down last month in connection with the abduction from Milan of a radical cleric named Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. The government sent...

NIGERGATE: The FBI re-opens the case, joint investigation with SISMI, the role of the French 007’s to be examined Chiocci and Sechi strike again. The following appeared in the Sunday edition of Il Giornale, interesting reading indeed. Of particular interest is the French slant, interesting because it needs to be investigated, interesting also because the first to point it out were the people her at FR. This new joint FBI-SISMI investigation has to be followed closely because it’s going to turn up some startling little gems, a lot of people are going to get very upset. Lets watch it happen………....

ROME - The head of Italy's military secret services will be questioned by a parliamentary commission next week over allegations that his organization gave the United States and Britain disputed documents suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa, officials said Tuesday. Nicolo Pollari, director of the SISMI intelligence agency, will be questioned on Nov. 3 by members of the commission overseeing secret services, said Micaela Panella, a commission spokeswoman. She said Pollari asked to be questioned after reports Monday and Tuesday in the Rome daily La Repubblica claiming SISMI passed on to the CIA, U.S. government officials...