Get Dick Wolfe on the Phone...
Perhaps the next new series should be Law & Order: Extraordinary Rendition.
"In the War on Terror, suspected terrorists are pursued by two powerful and important groups: the authorized and legal national investigative authorities, who wiretap, observe and accumulate evidence against the suspects, and the CIA, who without notice, kidnaps them and spirits them off to be tortured in third countries. These are their stories."
EXTERIOR SHOT: A street in Milan, Italy. Vespas and small cars zip by. Camera angles up to a small room in a nondescript building.
In Milan, Italian authorities have been monitoring a wiretap they've placed on the phone of an Islamic cleric, who had been granted asylum in Italy because of legitimate fears that he would be persecuted in his native Egypt. Suddenly, the cleric disappears. His wife and friends seem to have no idea where he is. The Italian police are bewildered; they open a missing-person investigation.
They discover a witness who saw the cleric grabbed on the street, shoved into a white van, and driven away at high speed. The head of the police anti-terrorism unit starts looking into the cell phones used in the area of the abduction. He discovers a cluster of phones heading toward a joint US-Italian air force base, where, it turns out, a US LearJet had left at a time that matched up. The jet flew to a US base in Germany, and another jet flew from there to Egypt.
Tracing the cell phone records in the other direction, they uncover a group of 18 Americans who had recently arrived in Milan, and found registers at various hotels featuring copies of passports. Some had even given the cell phone number to the hotel. Oddly, most of the home addresses are PO boxes in northern Virginia. The names turn out to be bogus. The companies they claim to work for don't exist. Cell phone records show calls to the US Consulate in Milan, an US Air Force officer at the air base, and several numbers in northern Virginia.
Fourteen months later, the cleric's wife gets a phone call. The Italians, being persistant, are still tapping the phone. They hear the cleric calling, saying he is now in Egypt, where he has just been released from custody after an Egyptian judge has ruled that he is not a terrorist threat. He tells his wife that he has been brutally tortured.
On Thursday, an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for the mysterious Americans. On Monday they will issue them through the European Union agreement that allows any member nation to arrest and extradite them. Assuming they use the same names there. Interpol will also be given the photographs taken from the hotel passports.
CUT TO BLACK.
This is where Dick Wolfe would have the mid-hour commercial break.
But I can't claim responsibility for this story idea, just the L&O pitch. For an outstanding article, see the Chicago Tribune original.
"In the War on Terror, suspected terrorists are pursued by two powerful and important groups: the authorized and legal national investigative authorities, who wiretap, observe and accumulate evidence against the suspects, and the CIA, who without notice, kidnaps them and spirits them off to be tortured in third countries. These are their stories."
EXTERIOR SHOT: A street in Milan, Italy. Vespas and small cars zip by. Camera angles up to a small room in a nondescript building.
In Milan, Italian authorities have been monitoring a wiretap they've placed on the phone of an Islamic cleric, who had been granted asylum in Italy because of legitimate fears that he would be persecuted in his native Egypt. Suddenly, the cleric disappears. His wife and friends seem to have no idea where he is. The Italian police are bewildered; they open a missing-person investigation.
They discover a witness who saw the cleric grabbed on the street, shoved into a white van, and driven away at high speed. The head of the police anti-terrorism unit starts looking into the cell phones used in the area of the abduction. He discovers a cluster of phones heading toward a joint US-Italian air force base, where, it turns out, a US LearJet had left at a time that matched up. The jet flew to a US base in Germany, and another jet flew from there to Egypt.
Tracing the cell phone records in the other direction, they uncover a group of 18 Americans who had recently arrived in Milan, and found registers at various hotels featuring copies of passports. Some had even given the cell phone number to the hotel. Oddly, most of the home addresses are PO boxes in northern Virginia. The names turn out to be bogus. The companies they claim to work for don't exist. Cell phone records show calls to the US Consulate in Milan, an US Air Force officer at the air base, and several numbers in northern Virginia.
Fourteen months later, the cleric's wife gets a phone call. The Italians, being persistant, are still tapping the phone. They hear the cleric calling, saying he is now in Egypt, where he has just been released from custody after an Egyptian judge has ruled that he is not a terrorist threat. He tells his wife that he has been brutally tortured.
On Thursday, an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for the mysterious Americans. On Monday they will issue them through the European Union agreement that allows any member nation to arrest and extradite them. Assuming they use the same names there. Interpol will also be given the photographs taken from the hotel passports.
CUT TO BLACK.
This is where Dick Wolfe would have the mid-hour commercial break.
But I can't claim responsibility for this story idea, just the L&O pitch. For an outstanding article, see the Chicago Tribune original.
posted by Paul at 9:59 AM |
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