An Italian judge sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric in a symbolic ruling against "rendition" flights used by the former U.S. government.

The Americans were all tried in absentia after the United States refused to extradite them. But the verdict, the first of its kind, was welcomed by rights campaigners who have long complained the renditions policy violated basic human rights.

Judge Oscar Magi dropped the case against three Americans, including a former CIA Rome station chief, for the abduction of Egyptian-born cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who was snatched off a Milan street in 2003 and flown to Egypt in the operation coordinated by the CIA and SISMI.

The CIA chief for Italy at the time, Jeffrey Castelli, and the then head of Italian military intelligence SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, were protected by state secrecy rules, while two other American defendants benefited from diplomatic immunity, Magi said.

Magi sentenced the former head of the CIA's Milan station, Robert Seldon Lady, to eight years in prison and the other 22 former CIA agents to five years each.

U.S. "disappointed"

US President Barack Obama's administration expressed "disappointment" at the verdict.

"We are disappointed by the verdicts against the Americans and Italians charged in Milan," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.

Prosecutor Armando Spataro hailed the verdict, saying the trial, which opened in June 2007, had demonstrated "the truth of the investigation."

He ruled that those convicted should paid 1 million euros in damages to Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, and 500,000 euros to his wife.

Abu Omar was secretly flown from Aviano airbase in northeast Italy via Ramstein base in Germany to the US base in Ramstein, Germany, Egypt where he says he was tortured and held until 2007 without charge.

It is the first case of its kind to contest the practice of "extraordinary rendition" under the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

Healing court verdict

The rights group Human Rights Watch hailed the verdict, even though the two highest-ranking officials were not convicted.

"No one was found innocent," noted Joanne Mariner, while lamenting those who "got off the hook because of the Constitutional Court's overbroad interpretation of state secrecy."

"The Italian government was found responsible for collaborating with the CIA. It was a brave ruling for an Italian court," Mariner was quoted as saying.

"And we agree with the prosecutors that diplomatic immunity is not meant to cover people involved in grave human rights abuses," Mariner, director of HRW's Terrorism and Anti-Terrorism Programme, was quoted as saying.

The issue went before Italy's Constitutional Court, which agreed that part of the investigation had violated state secrecy provisions but said the prosecution could use evidence obtained correctly.

Extraordinary rendition policy is said to involve the illegal apprehension and international transfer of CIA targets suspected of so-called "terrorist" links.

Spataro earlier Wednesday rejected the court ruling, saying: "There is no legal structure under which SISMI and the CIA could agree to carry out a kidnapping. It is absolutely against Italian law."

The prosecutor lamented what he called the "twisted logic" behind an operation that broke the law as well as sending a suspect to endure torture.

"This only encourages the multiplication of terrorists," said Spataro, who became known for his work against the left-wing militant group the Red Brigades that was active in the 1970s.

Reuters