A decade on, ex-CIA officer of Indian origin continues fight to clear her name

The extraordinary tale of former Central Intelligence Agency officer Sabrina de Sousa, an Indian-American, spans continents and a decade-long fight against governments, including her own, to clear her name in a counterterrorism operation gone wrong.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have known de Sousa for nearly four years since I first wrote a long piece about her travails in The Caravan.

Her goals are simple – to have the freedom to travel, to spend time with her family spread across Europe and India, and to visit her 90-year-old mother in Goa.

However, life is anything but simple for de Sousa, who has been battling for justice in the United States, Italy and Portugal since 2009, when an Italian court convicted her in absentia for her alleged role in the 2003 abduction of Islamic cleric Abu Omar in Milan. She maintains that she had no role in the planning or execution of the secret operation. It’s been an uphill battle to counter the charges.

Ironically, a slew of senior CIA officers who conceived the idea and got Washington’s approval for the kidnapping have received pardons or immunity, courtesy high-level interventions by the Obama administration.

But de Sousa is caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare of opaque screens and cutouts, demands of disparate judicial systems and swaggering egos, and above all the extreme burden of now being an outsider.

'Cautiously optimistic'

The wall of secrecy the US government has built around the case neither protects her nor allows her access to evidence to defend herself in Italy.

Last week, de Sousa, who has been living in Lisbon since last year, got another jolt when Portugal’s highest court upheld a request from Italy for her extradition. She could be extradited as soon as May 4, according to the court order.

It’s not yet clear whether she will get a retrial in Italy or have a chance to appeal her four-year sentence – conditions set by Portuguese courts for her extradition. Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella could pardon her, something that her Italian lawyer has been working for. A retrial could open a can of worms as de Sousa will provide new evidence that might shine a brighter light on her former bosses.

“I am cautiously optimistic,” she said over the phone, carefully measuring her words. Since she has dual US and Portuguese citizenship, she decided to be closer to her extended family in Lisbon. She was able to visit her mother in Goa earlier this year for a few days after protracted negotiations with Portuguese authorities and depositing a huge bond.

Some of the issues she faced as a naturalised American, of having family back in India and Portugal and the need to visit them, are not fully appreciated by her former CIA bosses and colleagues, some of whom have blandly told journalists that she should never have travelled to Europe and risked extradition. They were not aware that she had been excluded from receiving a pardon by the Italian president.

How it unfolded

In a surprising turn of events, Abu Omar, the cleric who was kidnapped, has also appealed to President Sergio Mattarella to pardon de Sousa. He wrote a letter, reported in the Italian media on April 26, saying he does not want to see her in prison. It seems even Omar appreciates how the system has worked against her.

Omar’s kidnapping by the CIA, technically called an “extraordinary rendition” in official American parlance, was a botched affair, particularly since Omar never met the threshold of rendition. In the post-9/11 world, the Bush administration was flailing and willing to strike in all directions to punish those it suspected, often with little evidence.

Careerist CIA officers, trying to establish their credentials as good soldiers in the “global war against terrorism” sometimes pursued dodgy cases and picked up the wrong person to send to “black sites”. Omar was released after a year in an Egyptian jail for lack of prosecutable evidence. He was picked up again later for violating a gag order.

The day he was abducted – February 17, 2003 – as he walked from his apartment to the mosque in Milan, de Sousa was chaperoning her son’s high school ski trip in northern Italy. She said she had no knowledge of what transpired that day.

A year before Omar’s kidnapping by CIA operatives and before he was identified as a target, de Sousa served as a translator between the Italian intelligence and a visiting team from Washington. “Rendition” was not a known concept then and even if it was, it was definitely above her pay grade, she said.

Yet, an Italian prosecutor decided she was key in Omar’s kidnapping and told The Washington Post in 2012 that an Italian court “doesn’t need the smoking gun” to get a conviction. In his opinion, “Sabrina should be in prison".

High and dry

What’s egregious is that senior CIA officers – 23 in all – and a US air force colonel actually involved in the kidnapping were pardoned or given immunity following a deal between Italy and the United States. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was reportedly part of the high-level negotiations. But de Sousa’s name was not on the list.

Interestingly, in February 2016, the European Court of Human Rights slammed Italy for its conduct in the entire affair and for asserting secrecy and acquitting the Italians involved in the case. Pope Francis has also strongly condemned renditions and complicity of countries like Italy for allowing the use of their airspace to whisk away suspects.

One can only speculate why a relatively junior officer was left to the mercy of a foreign government, given that the US government generally goes out of its way to protect its citizens. And in this case, de Sousa was undercover as an accredited US diplomat when the whole thing unfolded. Was it because she took on the establishment?

She was already back in Washington when the Italians began building a case against the rendition. She pressed the State Department to grant her immunity, but failed as the case in Italy wound its way through the courts.

After years of silent treatment and stonewalling, de Sousa finally resigned from the CIA in 2009. She filed cases in American courts to clear her name but all requests for documents to counter the charges were denied.

Italian justice

Her case raises serious questions about when Washington chooses to invoke diplomatic immunity and when it decides to throw people under the bus. Experts say they can’t remember another case like hers. Benjamin Fischer, a former chief historian of the CIA, told The Washington Post, “It’s unprecedented.”

The Obama Administration vehemently claimed immunity in the case of Raymond Davis, a CIA operative who killed two people in Pakistan in 2011 and was arrested. President Obama publicly intervened on behalf of Davis, who technically was not registered as a US diplomat in Pakistan. In sharp contrast, de Sousa was an accredited diplomat in Italy and what’s called a “declared” officer as opposed to a covert operative.

Interestingly, de Sousa’s case also shows Italian double standards. It’s worth recalling that Rome claimed immunity from Indian prosecution for its two marines who killed two Indian fishermen off the coast of Kerala in 2011.

The Italian government said that only Italian courts could try the marines since they were military personnel as it built a climate of jingoism at home to keep the pressure on India. The case is in arbitration but Italy is busy exacting revenge in other fora – it single-handedly blocked India’s membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime last October.

Shouldn’t the Italian government find a way out for de Sousa as it demands one for its marines? And shouldn’t the US government do something more to press for a pardon?

Abbe Lowell, de Sousa’s high-profile American lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during the 1999 impeachment hearings, is in touch with Washington officials. “The US government certainly is aware of Sabrina’s case and the current situation," he said. "And I am sure they and all the other officials understand the significance of assisting her to allow her to defend herself.”