John Brennan! +++ qui Milan!+++ pic.twitter.com/1p0GblRobs
— maurizio (@FalzoneMaurizio) August 2, 2014
Former CIA officer Sabrina de Sousa was convicted in 2009 of the abduction from Milan, Italy, of a cleric affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, was subsequently taken to his birth country Egypt where he was allegedly tortured. The case would become known as Caso Abu Omar or the Milan Rendition.
De Sousa, while not directly involved in either the abduction or the planning of Abu Omar’s rendition was charged along with 25 other American officials, most of them CIA officers.
In April 2015 de Sousa traveled from the U.S. to Portugal to visit with her family. Prior to her travel de Sousa and her legal team obtained approval from then Portuguese Attorney General, Ms. Joana Marques Vidal. Vidal issued de Sousa an informal nulla osta, or permission from Vidal, that she would be able to travel safely without being arrested.
Such assurances were necessary at the time as de Sousa had a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) out on her, meaning if she traveled anywhere on the European Continent she could be taken into custody. De Sousa would spend the next several months in Portugal without incident or without threats of extradition.
On October 5, 2015, the Portuguese government detained her as she was attempting to travel to Goa, India, to visit her mother. It was only on October 7, two days later, that Italy issued an extradition request.
As part of the extradition agreement Italy promised de Sousa a retrial, something she welcomed as she was eager to rebut the charges against her. At that time they stemmed from the “planning” of the rendition to “crimes against humanity” de Sousa told ITN.
Additionally the abduction of Abu Omar was an approved joint-operation between the U.S. and Italian governments, and also notable is that Egypt had no outstanding warrant against Abu Omar at the time of his abduction. He would be released soon after being taken into custody. Portuguese authorities would release de Sousa but she was ordered to remain in Portugal. She complied.
But in September 2016 de Sousa and her legal team received a letter informing them that Italy had formally upheld her conviction. The letter stated that as far as the Italian government is concerned the sentence handed down by the Supreme Court of Justice in Rome in 2012 was “irrevocable” and that the defendant had no right to a retrial or an appeal.
The letter was “poorly received in Portugal,” wrote Portuguese media outlet Expresso.pt at the time.
De Sousa filed numerous legal challenges in Portugal and lost. A second judgement in a case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over imprisonment is pending. (The ECHR has previously ruled that de Sousa should be extradited but told her to file a new complaint. She did, and in February 2019 she won when the Court offered an amicable settlement, finding Portugal in violation over her imprisonment.)
The timing of the letter sent in 2016 warrants additional scrutiny. It was dated June 24, 2016 but it was only “translated” on September 26, 2016 and sent the following day. There is evidence that former CIA Director John Brennan was in Portugal in June 2016. There is also evidence he was in Portugal in November 2016.
After the letter was sent Portugal ordered De Sousa’s immediate extradition, bypassing the Portuguese judicial process and refusing to let it play out. De Sousa’s extradition would be delayed after the CIA discovered she was receiving help from former Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) back in the States.
A proposed “spy swap” of an alleged Russian intelligence officer for de Sousa fell through, further delaying her extradition. “The optics of a CIA CT veteran serving a sentence for a joint CT operation would result in more questions about the role of the Italian government in authorizing the rendition,” de Sousa told ITN. “Italy sent this letter to the Portuguese to explain why there would be no trial, hoping the Portuguese would say, ‘well then we’re not sending her.’”
“No one wanted a retrial obviously with new witnesses and things like that,” she added. Her case was being reported on by media outlets from multiple countries and it was beginning to shine too bright a light on operations in Italy, especially those relating to SpyGate.
The unprecedented nature of de Sousa’s case lies in the pressure brought to bear by CIA Director Brennan to not only have a former officer silenced by imprisonment, but also by pressuring foreign governments who, unbeknownst to them, were participating in the scheme.
When the new Trump administration’s efforts to obtain full resolution for De Sousa came to an abrupt halt, de Sousa was forced to go to Italy to serve her time. By that point her sentence had been reduced from four to three years. Her originally scheduled date of release would have been November 8, 2020, four days after the presidential election.