Ex-CIA Milan chief detained in Panama
Robert Seldon Lady, former CIA Milan chief
Robert Seldon Lady was detained after Costa Rica sent him back to Panama. ■ A former CIA base chief in Italy who was convicted in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a street in Milan has been detained in Panama, the Italian justice ministry said. ■ An Italian official familiar with Italy's investigation and prosecution of Robert Seldon Lady said the former CIA official entered Panama, traveled to Costa Rica, and that officials there then sent him back to Panama where he was detained. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because only Italy's justice ministry was publicly discussing the case. ■ In Panama City, Panamanian Security Minister Jose Raul Molino told The Associated Press that he was unaware of Lady's detention, and the press office of the National Police — which works with Interpol, the international police agency — said it had no information about the case. The CIA said it had no immediate comment about its former employee. ■ Lady was sentenced by an Italian appeals court in Milan earlier this year in the extraordinary rendition case to nine years in prison after being tried in absentia in Italy for the kidnapping of the Muslim cleric. The trials of Lady, 59, now retired from the CIA, and two other Americans in the case brought the first convictions anywhere in the world against agents involved in the agency's extraordinary rendition program, a practice alleged to have led to torture.
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