Newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad recently reported ostensible links between the secret CIA operation and the removal of Krekar, a former Kurdish guerrilla leader, from Norway. Krekar's lawyer Brynjar Meling contacted Norwegian authorities at the relevant time, in 2003, warning he had learned of rumors that his client risked abduction.
New information has come to light in the wake of an intensive investigation by Italian authorities into the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also called Abu Omar, who was abducted in broad daylight in Milan in February 2003, and is still missing.
Eight Italian intelligence agents and 26 American counterparts have been charged with the abduction, and CIA agents Cynthia Dame Logan and Gregory Asherleigh feature prominently in the case.
The Chicago Tribune reported that Italian investigators traced Logan and Asherleigh's movements in Europe via airline bonus mile programs. CIA agents fly business class, and the discovery that agents registered their trips to win bonus points, a move that disclosed their movements, led former CIA boss Porter Goss to order an investigation into working methods before his departure in May, the Tribune reports.
The bonus mile records reveal that Logan was in Oslo for over two months in the summer of 2003, and that Asherleigh had been in Oslo for nearly a month in the spring of the same year.
At this time Italian police were in Norway questioning mullah Krekar, and Italian intelligence were also interested in the former Ansar al-Islam leader in 2003.
