STRASBOURG, France _ The cases of Abu Omar, a radical Muslim snatched by the CIA under the noses of the Milan police and flown secretly to Egypt, and Khalid el-Masri, a German national forcibly transported by that same agency from Macedonia to an Afghan prison by mistake, have propelled what once seemed a settled debate over human rights to the center of the European political stage.

By John Crewdson, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune Dec.

Italian prosecutors are forging ahead with kidnapping charges against 22 CIA agents, claiming they took a Muslim cleric to Egypt and ruined an investigation. The incident dates to March 2003, when cleric Abu Omar vanished in Milan.

U.S. allies have begun to resist Washington's secretive role in spiriting away terror suspects: Italy is investigating the disappearance of one accused militant as a kidnapping, Sweden wrote rules to assert its authority over outside agents and Canada is holding hearings after one of its citizens was sent to Syria.