Italy’s highest appeals court has upheld the guilty verdicts of 23 Americans, all but one of them CIA agents, accused of kidnapping a terror suspect.
Their case related to the abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.
The man, known as Abu Omar, was allegedly flown to Egypt and tortured.
The Americans were tried in absentia, in the first trial involving the CIA’s practice of transferring suspects to countries where torture is permitted.
The group of Americans – 22 of whom were CIA agents and one an Air Force pilot – are believed to be living in the United States and are unlikely to serve their sentences.
But they will be unable to travel to Europe without risking arrest.
The group include the former station chief of CIA operations in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, who at the time said that his opposition to the proposal to kidnap the imam was over-ruled.