A Kidnapping in Milan: Publication Info

A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial will be published in hardcover on October 11, 2010, by W. W. Norton and Co.

Praise for A Kidnapping in Milan

“Steve Hendricks is a gifted writer as well as a dogged sleuth, a combination that turns this account—a journey through some of the darker mazes of the war on terror—into one of those rarities: an important story, excellently told.”
—Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker staff writer and
    author of The Fall of Baghdad and The Lion’s Grave

“Exceptionally well written and deeply reported—a gripping novel-like book that brilliantly reconstructs one of the darker episodes of the ‘war on terror.’ ”
—Peter Bergen, CNN national security analyst and
    author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know

The Book in a Few Words

A story of the CIA’s kidnapping of the radical imam Abu Omar and one Italian magistrate’s struggle to put the CIA on trial.

The Book in a Few Sentences

In 2003 the police of Milan were closing in on a network of Islamic terrorists that recruited suicide bombers—until the radical imam at the heart of their investigation, Abu Omar, disappeared suddenly. He was, it would turn out, kidnapped by the CIA and sent to torture in Egypt. But the kidnappers were sloppy, and a bold Italian magistrate, Armando Spataro, traced them through cell-phone records and other clues, then struggled to bring them to trial—the first-ever such trial of CIA officers by an ally of the United States.

A Kidnapping in Milan is nonfiction with the immediacy of a detective story, the power of a beautifully written novel, and the sweep of a great history. Weaving together several narratives, it takes us inside a garage-turned-mosque in Milan where terrorists were nurtured and sent around the world, and it shows us how Italian prosecutors have fought the terrorists in their midst with laws and courts rather than kidnappings and torture. It also shows the savagery of the Egyptian dungeons where the CIA’s victims are shipped, the ways the CIA has molded Italy’s government for half a century, and—because author Hendricks tracked down several of the CIA’s kidnappers from Milan—the utter ordinariness of the spies next door.

Why Steve Wrote the Book

“The barbarisms of America’s ‘War on Terror’ appalled me, as did reporters who went along with the barbarisms,” Steve says. “I was particularly taken aback by the Bush (and now Obama) claims that torture-by-proxy makes us stronger. I wrote A Kidnapping in Milan because few reporters have shown what torture really looked like, because the Italian magistrate who was prosecuting the CIA kidnappers was a charismatic figure, and because I wanted to see if he would succeed in his struggle against American lawlessness. Also, before the CIA kidnapped Abu Omar, the Italians seemed to have had him under thorough and fruitful surveillance, and the snatch appeared to have badly damaged Italy’s work against terrorists. This case, in other words, looked like a good example of how the ‘War on Terror’ made the West less safe. I was also intrigued because the victim was probably a terrorist, not an utter innocent, which added a shade of gray to a story that might otherwise have been more black and white. I wanted to see if I could make a convincing case that torture was wrong no matter who its victim was.”

Read an Excerpt of the Book

[coming fall of 2010 ]

Buy the Book

To buy A Kidnapping in Milan from Powell’s, click here.

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© 2006–2010 Steve Hendricks