Brussels, 29/12/2005 (Agence Europe) - A Milan court has issued European arrest warrants against 22 agents of the CIA suspected of having kidnapped an Egyptian religious leader in 2003, announced public prosecutor Armando Spataro on 23 December. Mr Spataro said that he had asked Interpol to arrest the CIA agents in question. The Egyptian Osama Mustafa Hassan, who is said to have close links with the terrorist network Al-Qaida, disappeared in February 2003. The Italian justice system, which discovered a certain amount of evidence in the homes of CIA agents in Italy, suspected that the Italian information services were responsible for his disappearance. According to the Italian press, Osama Mustafa Hassan is still being held in Egypt, where he claims to have been tortured. European arrest warrants are valid in all 25 Member States of the European Union, and arrests can be made without governmental authorisation. The actions of the Italian magistrates have weighed heavily on Italian-American relations, particularly as it comes on top of the bloody liberation of the hostage Giuliana Sgrena last March. Several cases involving the American secret services on European territory are currently the object of legal investigations in German and Spain (EUROPE 9068). Although many Member States of the EU have reported the passage of CIA aeroplanes on their territory, the Polish territory completed its investigation into the presence of suspected CIA prisons on its territory, but declined to publish its conclusions.