ROME, February 12 - RAPSI. A Milan appeals court has sentenced Niccolo Pollari, former chief of Italy's SISMI military intelligence agency, to 10 years in prison for his involvement in the kidnapping of an imam, Italian media reported on Tuesday.

His former deputy Marco Mancini received nine years in prison in the case.

According to the investigators, Abu Omar, the imam of a Milan mosque, was kidnapped over suspected links to al-Qaeda on February 17, 2003 by the CIA.

He was then transported to a NATO Air Base in the Aviano municipality and then flown via Germany to a prison in Egypt where he claims that he was tortured.

In 2010, despite the prosecutor office's demands to sentence Pollari and Mancini to 12 and 10 years in prison, respectively, the appeals court ruled to cease the legal action in the case due to the need to safeguard the state's secrets.

However, Milan's Cassation Court ordered to reopen the case in October and confirmed the sentence earlier handed down to 23 CIA agents involved in the abduction.
In early February, the appeals court sentenced former Rome CIA station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other agents in the case to seven years in prison.