Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr
| Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr | |
|---|---|
Surveillance photo of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr.
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| Religion | Islam |
| Other names | Abu Omar |
| Personal | |
| Born |
18 March 1963 Egypt |
| Religious career | |
| Post | Imam |
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Arabic: حسن مصطفى أسامة نصر Ḥassan Muṣṭafā Usāmah Naṣr) (born 18 March 1963), also known as Abu Omar, is an Egyptian cleric. In 2003, he was living in Milan, Italy, from where he was kidnapped and tortured in Egypt. This "Imam rapito affair" prompted a series of investigations in Italy, culminating in the criminal convictions (in absentia) of 22 CIA operatives, a U.S. Air Force colonel, and two Italian accomplices, as well as Nasr, himself.
He is a member of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an Islamic organisation that was formerly dedicated to the overthrow of the Egyptian government; the group has committed to peaceful means following the coup d'état that toppled Mohamed Morsi. The group has been linked to the murder of Anwar Sadat in 1981 and a terrorist campaign in the 1990s that culminated in the November 1997 Luxor massacre. As a result, it is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union. After the Egyptians declared the group illegal, Nasr sought asylum in Italy. During the 1990s he fought in Bosnia.
On 17 February 2003, Nasr was abducted by CIA agents as he walked to his mosque in Milan for noon prayers, thus becoming an effective ghost detainee. He was later transported to a prison in Egypt where, he states, he was tortured.
In April 2004, while his incarceration had been downgraded to house arrest, Nasr placed several phone calls from Egypt to his family and friends. He told them he had been rendered into the hands of Egypt's SSI at Tora Prison, twenty miles south of Cairo. He said he had been subjected to various depredations, tortured by beating and electric shocks to the genitals, raped, and eventually had lost hearing in one ear. At the time of the calls he had been released on the orders of an Egyptian judge because of lack of evidence. Shortly after those calls were made he was re-arrested and placed back in prison.
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