BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan was believed to be dead Tuesday after a video received by Al-Jazeera television showed a hooded figure shooting a blindfolded woman in the head. pistol into the head of a blindfolded woman wearing an orange jumpsuit, Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said. "She was presumed to be Mrs. Hassan," he told The Associated Press.

The station initially said it would air parts of the video, but Ballout then said it would not.

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Yes, the story is a couple of days old, but we didn't have a chance to mention it before and I wanted to be sure to put it out there, since the American media is certainly not playing this up.

InTheNews:

An Italian judge has ordered that 31 people stand trial over the kidnapping of an Islamic cleric as part of the US policy of extraordinary rendition.

Virtually all of the 26 American suspects are thought to be present or former CIA agents, while the other five defendants are Italian nationals.

Prosecutors allege that Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr was abducted in Milan on February 17th 2003 and flown to Germany and then his native Egypt to be questioned over suspected terrorist involvement.

Critics say Mr Nasr, only recently released, was taken to Africa in order to be tortured.

The previously secret US practice of extraordinary rendition, employed at the height of the war on terror, saw terror suspects taken to countries with more relaxed laws on interrogation and torture.

Italian prime minister Romano Prodi has not yet decided whether to ask for the 26 American defendants to be extradited - a request almost certainly to be turned down - but under Italian law the trial can go ahead regardless.