Dave Lindorff: "Just for Sissies: US Flaunts Rule of Law Demanding Others Honor It" @ This Can't Be Happening!

Ah, the rule of law. How often we hear our government leaders angrily demand that the rest of the world adhere to this sacred stricture, most recently as it demands that countries -- even countries with which the US has signed no extradition treaty like Russia or China -- honor the US charges leveled against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and send him to the US for trial.

But the rule of law, in truth, means little to the US, which routinely thumbs its nose at the whole notion.

Take the case of Robert Lady, the former CIA station chief in Rome Italy. Lady, along with 21 other CIA operatives, was charged years ago with the illegal 2003 kidnapping off a street in Milan of a man that the US claimed was a suspected terrorist. Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr was thrown into a van and then secretly renditioned first to a secret CIA “black site,” and later to Egyptian police, who, he says, tortured him for the US. Four years later, Nasr was released after an Egyptian court ruled that he was not guilty of anything.

Italy indicted 22 Americans in Nasr’s illegal kidnapping, and sought their presence for a trial. The US, ignoring the rule of law, refused to send its agents to Italy, a country with which the US has a long-established extradition treaty, and which is a long-standing member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), so they were tried in absentia in Italy. Lady, as station chief and chief architect of the kidnapping, was found guilty along with 13 others (eight men were acquitted) and was sentenced, also in absentia, to nine years in prison.
Subsequently, Italy sought to have him extradited by the US to accept his punishment, but the US refused.
Now Lady, who had disappeared from view, has been arrested on an international fugitive warrant in Panama, and Italy is seeking his extradition from that country.
It will be instructive to see how the US responds to this situation...
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent three-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1881
Please, IF YOU VALUE THIS PUBLICATION, PLEASE SUPPORT US! (AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW T-SHIRTS BY SCROLLING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO BECOME “A MAJOR DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE”!)

Hard to believe it, but this publication is, rather improbably, approaching the end of its third year of publication, and has just clocked in its 3.5 millionth reader, with readership up this year by 50% over a year ago! We did this all with almost no financial support--only what you, our readers, provided. Can you help us begin our fourth year a whole lot better, by giving use more financial support, so that we can devote more time to being reporters? If you believe as we do that we need more independent journalism, please put your money where your convictions are, and back ThisCantBeHappening! Use the Paypal button at the bottom of the home page, or send us a check at the address listed on the “Support Us” page. We’re not asking for much: just $5 a year from each person who reads and values us.
That’s our model. Make it work!