ROME - After 37 years in the Italian Secret Services, Marco Mancini, 60, will be retiring in July - a retirement perhaps brought forward by the controversy surrounding his meeting with former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in the carpark of a roadside services in December, according to intelligence sources.

  Mancini’s age would allow him another five years at the secret services, something he is thought to have wanted, being just a step away from becoming vice director of the Department of Information Security (DIS), but the furore following his meeting with Renzi led secret service bosses to convince him to step down, reports Il Fatto Quotidiano.

  Mancini’s long career with first the Carabinieri, then SISMI (Military Intelligence and Security Service) and finally DIS, has been marked by several controversies.

  He was arrested in July 2006 for his involvement, as the then No 2 of SISMI, in the abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, better known as Abu Omar. Abu Omar, who was at the time the Imam of Milan, was in 2003 kidnapped in a joint operation by the CIA and SISMI, suspected of extremist activities, and taken to Egypt where he was interrogated, tortured and imprisoned for four years without charges.

  In 2006, Mancini, SISMI boss Nicolò Pollari and 22 US secret service agents were indicted, but Mancini and Pollari were never convicted, due to the use of secret evidence in the trials and their backing by the Italian secret services.

  During these investigations, an illegal surveillance operation run by Mancini was discovered, in which over 5,000 people’s phones were tapped, dating back to 1996. He was arrested again, in December 2006, and in 2013 sentenced to nine years in jail, but later appealed it.

  He somehow managed to keep a job within the secret services and again dominated headlines in December 2020 when a clandestine meeting with Renzi in the car park of an Autogrill was filmed by a passerby from their car. The meeting was thought to be regarding his promotion to No 2 at DIS, Mancini trying to curry favour with Renzi. An additionally controversial meeting as he went there in his service car, with a guard, without informing any of his superiors.

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