police, and handed over to the U.S. CIA. While in CIA custody, he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly held in a black site, interrogated, beaten, strip-searched, sodomized, and subjected to other inhuman and degrading treatment, which at times escalated to torture, though none of those claims can be verified. After El-Masri held hunger strikes, and was detained for four months in the "Salt Pit", the CIA finally admitted his arrest was a mistake and released him. He is believed to be among an estimated 3,000 detainees, including several key leaders of al Qaeda, whom the CIA captured from 2001 to 2005, in its campaign to dismantle terrorist networks. Abu Omar case In 2003, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (aka "Abu Omar") was kidnapped by the CIA in Milan (Italy), and deported to Egypt. His case has been characterized by the Swiss senator Dick Marty as a "perfect example of extraordinary rendition". Abu Omar was kidnapped as he walked to his mosque in Milan for noon prayers. He was transported on a Learjet (using the call sign SPAR 92) to Ramstein, Germany. SPAR (Special Air Resources) is the call sign used by US senior military officers and civilian VIPs for airlift transport. A second plane took him to Cairo, where he was imprisoned and, he claims, tortured. In 2005, the Italian judge Guido Salvini issued a warrant for the arrest of 13 persons said to be agents or operatives of the CIA in association with Nasr's kidnapping. In December 2005, an Italian court issued a European arrest warrant against 22 CIA agents suspected of this kidnapping (including Robert Seldon Lady, Eliana Castaldo, Lt. Col. Joseph L. Romano, III, etc.). The CIA has not commented on the case, while Berlusconi's government has denied any knowledge of a kidnapping plot. Just after the 2006 Italian general elections, Roberto Castelli (Lega Nord), outgoing Justice Minister, declared to Italian prosecutors that he had not passed the extradition request to the US. In 2005, The Washington Post reported Italian court documents which showed that the CIA tried to mislead Italian anti-terrorism police who were looking for the cleric at the time. Robert S. Lady, the CIA's substation chief in Milan, has been implicated in the abduction. In a written opinion upholding the arrest warrant, judge Enrico Manzi wrote that the evidence taken from Lady's home "removes any doubt about his participation in the preparatory