The World
James Bond Never Had Such Hassles
Judges in Europe apparently take a dim view of foreign spies abducting people for detention abroad, even if those snatched are said to be terrorist suspects. A judge in Italy last week indicted 26 Americans-including former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady and former Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli-and five Italians in the 2003 Milan abduction of radical Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr. The CIA had no comment, and the Americans, most known only by their aliases, are not expected to return to Italy to face the charges.
The Italian action follows moves in Germany to arrest 13 people, part of a CIA "abduction team," for their roles in the 2003 mistaken kidnapping and imprisonment of a Lebanese-born German citizen, Khaled al-Masri. Those indicted, their names likely aliases, include the four-member crew of the Boeing 373 that transported Masri after he was snatched in Macedonia and the CIA operatives involved on the ground.
The legal proceedings are an embarrassment for the CIA, and they undercut American pronouncements about respecting the rule of law and national sovereignty. Still, a yearlong European parliamentary investigation last week cited at least 11 countries-among them Germany, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, Greece, and Turkey-as either cooperating with "extraordinary renditions" or not responding to the inquiry committee.
Trying Harder to Stir Some Ardor
Some of the shine is off Ségolène Royal, who just weeks ago seemed headed to become France's first female president. After a series of gaffes and presentation of a costly Socialist Party agenda, polls now show her falling behind her center-right rival, the pro-American Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Verbal flubs during trips to the Mideast and China have taken a toll, and her speech larded with welfare-state goodies didn't seem to stir middle-class enthusiasm. The sudden resignation of her economic adviser last week signaled more trouble.
Revisiting Spain's National Trauma
More than simply justice, many in Spain are seeking catharsis in the trial that began last week for 29 suspects in the March 2004 rush-hour train bombing in Madrid that killed 191 people. Investigators say the bombing was the work of a homegrown cell of Arab Muslim radicals inspired by but with no direct links to al Qaeda. (Some blew themselves up to avoid capture in 2004.) Seven lead defendants face maximum prison terms limited under Spanish law to 40 years; there is no death penalty in Spain.
Chávez Calling: Do You Hear Me Now?
Firebrand President Hugo Chávez advanced his government takeover of "strategic" sectors of Venezuela's economy with the $572 million buyout of Verizon Communications' stake in the country's largest telecom company. Analysts called the negotiated price reasonable, assuaging fears that Chávez would mimic mentor Fidel Castro with Cuba-style expropriations.
Venezuela is the world's No. 8 oil exporter, and Chávez is using oil income to advance his "Bolivarian revolution" that rejects the 1990s-style free-market reforms that drew foreign investment to Latin America. Also announced this month: Venezuela is buying out electric company investments by Virginia-based AES Corp. (for $739 million) and Michigan-based CMS Energy Corp. (for $105 million).
Seeing Red on Valentine's Day
The Valentine's Day contraband-"Today, Tomorrow, Forever, I Love You" teddy bears, along with such kitschy items as red mirrors and love candles-was stashed at the back of the "Don't Hesitate" gift shop in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. The subterfuge isn't optional. "The religious police will throw anyone selling anything red in jail," one of the shop's workers confided last week. "So we do it in secret."
Call it the war on Valentine's Day. Six years ago, Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Sheik, the kingdom's top religious authority, issued an edict against the holiday. Each year, a reminder of the fatwais printed in the country's newspapers, teachers warn their students against "worthless foreign customs," and the bearded morality police patrol the promenades for any sign of Valentine's Day paraphernalia.
Nevertheless, interest has grown, and red has simply gone underground as defiant young men and women furtively buy romantic gifts out the back doors of malls, markets, and corner shops. The phenomenon speaks to tension between the state's strict religious orthodoxy and Saudi youth-generally deeply devout but simultaneously influenced by what they see on the Internet and satellite TV. "It's just a fun thing to do,"said one young man shopping for valentines. "But I'm also a proud Muslim, and deep inside I feel guilty for participating in Valentine's Day. I would be very sad if everyone started doing it, but in truth everyone already is, including me."
With Benjamin Joffe-Walt in Saudi Arabia and Associated Press
This story appears in the February 26, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.