At least six people were killed and 20 others injured today in a double bomb attack outside the Baghdad office of an Iraq government agency which cares for Sunni mosques and shrines, witnesses and a hospital official said.

TWENTY-SIX US citizens, almost all believed to be CIA agents, went on trial in absentia yesterday accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan and flying him to Egypt.

The first trial involving the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme opened in Italy today, without the presence of any of the 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect.

AN editorial this week in the Wall Street Journal provided a frightening insight into US thinking about the behaviour of European governments in relation to extraordinary rendition.

An Egyptian cleric today claimed the CIA “savagely” tortured him after he was allegedly kidnapped off the streets of Italy before being sent to Egypt for further interrogation.

The European Parliament today approved a report accusing Ireland, the UK, Germany, Italy and other EU nations of turning a blind eye to CIA flights transporting terror suspects to secret prisons overseas in an apparent breach of EU human rights standards.

An Egyptian Muslim preacher allegedly kidnapped by CIA agents off the streets of an Italian city and taken to Egypt has been released, his lawyer and a security official said today.

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern held firm on the Government’s refusal to hold an independent investigation into CIA-operated flights landing in Ireland and suspected of being involved in illegal rendition.

Police in Iraq today confirmed the kidnapping of more than 40 Shiites along a notoriously dangerous road just north of Baghdad.

Italian prosecutors today said they were seeking the arrest of four more Americans as part of an investigation into the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.

Italy’s justice minister has refused to send a request to the United States for the arrest and extradition of 22 purported CIA agents accused of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.

EUROPEAN governments are not willing to reveal what they know about US intelligence service activities on their territory, effectively obstructing an investigation into allegations of CIA secret prisons and flights in Europe, Human Rights Watch said it planned to tell the European Parliament today.

European governments are not willing to reveal what they know about US intelligence service activities on their territory, effectively obstructing an investigation into allegations of CIA secret prisons and flights in Europe, Human Rights Watch said it planned to tell the European Parliament tomorrow.

GOVERNMENT assurances that at least 40 CIA flights through Shannon Airport had nothing to do with the rendition and possible torture of prisoners were rubbished in a high-level report yesterday.

European investigators looking into claims of secret CIA prisons will release an interim report today saying US agents illegally transported and held terrorist suspects on the continent, the leader of the inquiry says.

US policies in the war on terror are contravening international laws on human rights, a top European investigator says.

The suicide attackers who killed more than 3,000 people on September 11 are being hailed by a UK-based Islamist group as "The Magnificent 19".