Robert Seldon Lady (born February 2, 1954, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; nicknamed "Mister Bob") is an American intelligence officer.
[1] Italian authorities proved in court that in 2003, Lady helped a team of CIA agents kidnap Nasr (see extraordinary rendition) as he walked to his mosque in Milan for noon prayers.
In an interview with GQ Magazine in March 2007, Lady said of his superiors at the CIA that "the agency has told me to keep quiet and let this blow over.
But state institutions in the whole world have professionals in my sector, and it's up to us to do our duty.He said of Abu Omar's abduction, "Of course it was an illegal operation.
"[9][10] On November 4, 2009, Italian Judge Oscar Magi convicted Lady, along with 22 other accused CIA employees, of kidnapping, and sentenced him to eight years.
The New York Times called this decision a "landmark ruling" and an "enormous symbolic victory" for Italian prosecutors because it "was the first ever to contest the United States practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, presumably one more open to coercive interrogation techniques.