A Portugese court has ruled that a former CIA operative convicted for her involvement in the 2003 kidnapping of a Egyptian cleric under a U.S. renditions program ordered by the administration of former President George W. Bush will be sent to Italy to serve a six-year sentence there, legal papers revealed Friday.
Sabrina De Sousa, a joint U.S.-Portugese citizen, was one of 26 people convicted in absentia in 2009 on charges of kidnapping Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, a terror suspect who was under surveillance by Italian law enforcement, from a street in Milan in 2003 and taking him to be questioned in Egypt, reported Fox News. Nasr alleges that during his incarceration, he was brutally tortured, raped and held illegally for years before he was finally released without charge.
The case focused attention at the time on the treatment of suspects moved around the world for interrogation in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and strained relations between Washington and Rome. The case also implicated Italy's secret services, serving to embarrass successive Italian governments.
She was arrested in at Lisbon Airport in October 2015 on a European warrant and, according to her own testimony, was on her way to visit her elderly mother in India with a round-trip ticket when she was detained. Her passport was revoked in the meantime, pending the court's decision on her extradition.
De Sousa has maintained her innocence throughout the entire case, claiming that while the operation against Nasr in Italy had "broke the law," it was done with the consent of the CIA leadership, according to IntelNews.
Learning of the news Friday, De Sousa's Portuguese lawyer, Manuel Magalhaese Silva, said that he intends to lodge an appeal at the Supreme Court, which could take up to three months to reach a decision. If that fails, he will go to Constitutional Court, he added, according to the New York Times.
In the meantime, De Sousa is working on memoirs, which she has been compiling since November and, she says, go "through this whole business of trying to clear my name."
