By Cècile Hennion
Le Monde
Thursday 07 June 2007
Barely forty-four years old, the man appears to be sixty. Egyptian Imam Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, describes himself as "a broken old man, with my body in ruins," a man "who eats too much, no longer desires his wife, gorged on tranquilizers." Not a night goes by that he doesn't "wake up screaming," a souvenir of a very real nightmare that began with his kidnapping in a street of Milan, Italy, on February 17, 2003 that was followed by interminable torture sessions over a period of four years in Egyptian jails.
On Friday, June 8, Abu Omar should have been the key witness in the historic trial of 26 CIA agents and several former leaders of the Italian military secret services, accused of the illegal transfers of detainees in the framework of the American war against terrorism. The Italian judges will not hear the imam's story. The Italian consulate in Cairo rejected his visa; his papers as a political refugee in Italy - obtained in 1997 - had expired while he was in prison, and Egyptian authorities have registered him on the list of citizens forbidden to travel abroad.
"The United Nations, the Council of Europe, NGOs profess beautiful principles that apply to Europeans and to Westerners. But when it's a question of Arabs and Muslims, all that is no more than a bit of ink on paper," deplores Abu Omar. "Justice will not be done. The Italian government hides behind 'state secrets.' The CIA commandos will not appear. This trial has taken on an international scope, but that does not concern me. Scandal broke out when the head of the Italian intelligence services in Iraq, Nicola Calipari, was killed by the Americans (in 2005). The Italians wanted to slap them back; they used my case, the way one uses a winning card in a game of poker, without any consideration for my suffering."
His ankles still bear the stigmata of his former fetters. Raising his dishdasha (a garment), he exhibits the marks from electrical burns on his arms and legs. Because of repeated beatings on his face, Abu Omar can no longer hear in one ear. "The physical tortures wear away with time," he assures me, "but the psychological tortures are machines of destruction." For proof, he takes the case of Khaled Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese origin, kidnapped under similar conditions in Macedonia at the end of December 2003 to be "interrogated" for six months in an Afghan prison. Three weeks ago, Masri set fire to a supermarket. Now he's in a home for the insane. "We've all become crazy. The only difference between me and Masri is that religion has helped me hold the course, even though the Egyptian officer laughed in my face when I asked him for a copy of the Koran."
Abu Omar proclaims he has been a "Salafist," a very rigorous practicant of Islam, since he was twenty-two years old. As he relates his itinerary, his flight from Egypt to Italy by way of Jordan, Yemen, Pakistan and Albania, he is aware that these destinations could have aroused the suspicions of Western secret services. He met jihadists. But he asserts that he has always rejected "their ideology and their methods." "I don't know how to use a weapon," he adds. "I fled from Egypt before my military service."
Born in 1963 in the Mahram Beik neighborhood of Alexandria, Abu Omar studied law and was enthralled by politics. He adhered to Wafd, a liberal party, where he frequented a certain Ayman Nour, the sole and unfortunate competitor to Hosni Mubarak during the last presidential election in 2005, who was thrown into prison shortly after his defeat, and whose friends and family still await his liberation.
Very early, Abu Omar preferred religious commitment and became one of the youngest preachers in Alexandria. His sermons did not spare the regime, which earned the imam - then 25 years old - his first stretch in prison and his first sessions of torture. Six months in the Tora jails of Cairo disgusted him with his country forever. That's what made him decide to flee, by way of Jordan, to Yemen, then to Peshawar in Pakistan. He relates that he worked then for a Kuwaiti humanitarian organization that helped Afghan refugees.
"Peshawar was the jihadists' - notably the Egyptians' - rear base. They threatened me with death several times because I rejected their fight. That's why I left for Albania in 1992," he says. There the young man joined another organization, the Wakalat al-insaniya lil ghaouth wal taamir (Agency for Rescue and Reconstruction), financed by Saudi Arabia. At the end of a year, he married an Albanian woman who would give him two children and launched himself in the sale of "meat and groceries."
"The Americans knew all about this journey for a long time. In 1994, they arrested and interrogated me alongside the Albanian police. As a shopkeeper, I had many contacts with the Arabs and Muslims who came to fight in Bosnia. The police told me: "You stay and become our informant; otherwise, you leave.' I packed my bags with my family and left for Germany, then Italy, where I succeeded in gaining political refugee status."
In Milan, Abu Omar resumed his functions as an imam in the local mosque. His sermons were as virulent as they had been in the past, and this time attacked American policy in the Middle East. "I had a feeling something was going to happen to me. A camera had been installed at the entrance to the mosque that filmed the comings and goings of all the faithful. I received strange telephone calls. I had the impression I was being followed." Up to the day of his kidnapping: when men got out of a white van, grabbed him and laid him out in the back of the vehicle. It was noon in Milan. The next day at dawn, he disembarked in Cairo.
Morgan Mohammed, an Egyptian entrepreneur who had emigrated to Milan and who frequented the same mosque, was apprehended by the Egyptian police September 28, 2003 as he left his plane, which had just landed in Cairo. He had never had any problems with the government. He spent ten months in prison. Even today, he does not understand why [he was arrested]. "They asked me whether I financed Abu Omar, and accused me of training my workers to become mudjahadijn for Iraq: it was a building restoration business!" he timidly confides.
On April 4, 2004 Abu Omar was declared innocent and freed "on the condition that he keep quiet." "As I left, I saw a document on an officer's desk," he swears. "It was a sheet divided into two parts. The first concerned me. It was written: 'freed, but mustn't open his mouth so as not to embarrass the Italian government;' the second part was a list of a dozen Arabs residing in Italy 'to send to Egypt,' probably the same way I had been sent. That's why I decided to talk."
Several words to the media. A return to prison. An officer explained to him that he "'would stay there until he was forgotten.'" Abu Omar was freed on February 11, 2007. He repeats that he has lost everything and expects nothing from the Milan trial. His only desire: "To leave Egypt."
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.