Ex-CIA Chief Convicted in Italy Detained in Panama

Over kidnapping of Muslim cleric in 2003

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 Thursday.

Robert Seldon Lady, the former Milan CIA station chief, 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, who has since 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.