Terror suspect was beaten while in custody, lawyer says

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By Hannah Allam

CAIRO, Egypt - A militant Egyptian cleric who allegedly was abducted from an Italian street by CIA officers and turned over to Egypt in 2003 has met with his lawyer for the first time and said he was beaten repeatedly in the early stages of his imprisonment, including while he was in U.S. custody.

Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, who's also known as Abu Omar, met with his attorney three times between mid-March and late April at Tura prison just south of Cairo, his lawyer, Montasser Zayat, told Knight Ridder on Tuesday.

The meetings were the first allowed by Egyptian authorities since Nasr, who's being held without charge in solitary confinement, was seized three years ago ..

The kidnapping strained relations between the United States and Italy, where authorities have charged 22 Americans with the abduction - including the former head of the CIA base in Milan. Italian authorities have denied that they knew of the abduction beforehand, but former CIA officers have voiced skepticism, noting that the Americans appeared to have made no efforts to disguise their identities and used their real names, passports and personal cell phones while allegedly conducting the operation ..

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