ROME: An Italian court is to reach a verdict this week in the landmark trial of 26 US secret agents in the 2003 abduction of a terror suspect from a Milan street.

The trial, which opened in June 2007, is the highest profile case involving the CIA’s covert “extraordinary rendition” programme in which scores of terror suspects are thought to have been transferred to countries known to practise torture.

The Milan court will reconvene tomorrow, when Judge Oscar Magi will invite brief final remarks before withdrawing to deliberate, with a verdict expected the same day, prosecutor Armando Spataro said in an e-mail.

Observers said the verdict may not be known until as late as Friday, however. Twenty-five 25 CIA agents and a US air force colonel were tried in absentia in the case, which also involved seven Italian secret service officials including the former head of military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, who was forced to quit over the affair.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, an imam better known as Abu Omar, was snatched from a Milan street on February 17, 2003, in an operation coordinated by the CIA and Italian military intelligence.

The radical Islamist opposition figure, who enjoyed political asylum in Italy, was allegedly taken to the US air force base in Aviano, northeastern Italy, then flown to the US base in Ramstein, Germany, and on to Cairo.

The imam’s suspected captors failed to take many standard precautions.