Italian police looking for a missing radical Islamic cleric in 2003 found clues on the unprotected home PC of the CIA's chief spy in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady.

Angelo Foglieri, an Italian anti-terrorism investigator, told a court how he found street maps on the CIA officer's computer that had been downloaded from an Internet travel service, Expedia.com. For some reason, the CIA wnted to know the quickest routes from the cleric's mosque and home in Milan to Aviano Air Base, a joint US-Italian military installation a few hours' drive away.

On the computer were surveillance snaps of the Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.
Twenty-six Americans are charged with grabbing Nasr off the street as he walked toward a Milan mosque on February 17, 2003.He was flown to Cairo and, it's alleged, tortured by the Egyptian secret police as part of an investigation into Al-Qaeda.

None of the Americans are in court ,and all but three are known only by aliases. There are also several members of the Italian military intelligence agency, SISMI, involved.

Lady used Expedia to book a plane trip to Cairo around the time Nasr was kidnapped. He has since fled Italy and retired from the CIA.

The computer listed 70 hotels that Italian investigators used to help identify CIA operatives who played a role in the kidnapping. Bizarrely, all the information which was on the PC was totally unprotected.

While the police have demanded the extradition of the Americans, the Italian government has refused, but arrest warrants for the Americans have been posted throughout the European Union. X

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AP