Former CIA officer Sabrina de Sousa and 25 other Americans were charged for the 2003 abduction of a Muslim cleric from Milan, Italy. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, would be subsequently be taken to Egypt where he was allegedly tortured by the Egyptian government.
In 2009 de Sousa along with the other Americans would be convicted. The case would become known as the Milan Rendition.
In 2014 she was informed by her lawyer that former CIA Director John Brennan had excluded her from a pardon list requested from former Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. She was the only official Brennan excluded. So startled was de Sousa that she wrote to attorney Aw. Fabio Cagnola requesting she be included and inquiring as to whether the U.S. government was paying the legal fees of the pardon package.
Cagnola was the U.S. Embassy Rome Italian lawyer at the time. The Italian Ministry of Justice would later confirm that de Sousa never had the support of the U.S. government and was therefore excluded from any resolution.
Most startling about the case were the lengths U.S. government officials would go to sacrifice rank and file CIA officers in order to protect senior officers. Charges, along with an arrest warrant, would quietly be dropped against Jeffrey Castelli for example. Castelli was the CIA station chief in Rome at the time.
Early in the 2009 trial against the Americans Castelli, along with three other Americans, were granted diplomatic immunity and acquitted. De Sousa, who also had full diplomatic immunity, as proven by Italian court documents as well as a U.S. Freedom of Information Act submission, was excluded from what appears to back-channel negotiations. (There is no official record of the U.S. formally invoking diplomatic immunity for U.S. diplomats in the case.)
Castelli’s diplomatic immunity would be overturned by an Italian appeals court in February 2013 and he would be sentenced to seven years in prison. But the only person who would see the inside of a prison cell would be de Sousa.
Castelli’s initial acquittal raises questions as he is widely believed to be the mastermind of the abduction. Abu Omar would be held for over a year before being released by an Egyptian judge for lack of prosecutable evidence.
“He turned out to be a nobody,” de Sousa told ITN. A characterization echoed by retired CIA veteran and author of the rendition program Michael Scheuer.
“One thing is clear, that like all operations of this nature, and related to Europe the National Security Advisor gave its go-ahead,” Scheuer said in 2005. He added that it is likely then-NSA Condolezza Rice and her number two Stephen Hadley would have been aware of, and may have even approved, the operation.
“I would not rule out that it may have reached [President George W. Bush]” he added. “But I am not sure on this point.”
There are some press reports that say Castelli acted but without express approval from Italian officials. Other accounts say Italian officials were aware of the desire to carry such operations out but were unclear on the specific details of the Abu Omar operation.
Still other accounts, revealed in court documents, show Italian authorities within SISMI, the Italian military intelligence service, were aware of the operations but reserved plausible deniability.
Regardless of who knew what and when, it is clear that the operation was planned and authorized by senior government officials on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet it was rank and file officers who were charged.
In fact, an Italian judge in the case would increase the sentences handed out from five years to seven for “crimes against humanity,” a serious charge generally reserved for those who commit genocide.
“One individual was rendered,” de Sousa told ITN, “not masses.”
It is important to note that at the time of Abu Omar’s abduction, de Sousa was over 100 miles away chaperoning her son’s school ski trip. Abu Omar himself would eventually absolve de Sousa of any involvement. “Sabrina was not involved in kidnap me,” he wrote on Twitter in December 2016, after urging the Italian President to pardon her.
Even more remarkable is the fact that during de Sousa’s legal proceedings it was revealed that evidence in her case was swapped. A judge ordered the “replacement” of evidence obtained by the prosecutor. That evidence consisted of “non-redacted documents” and contained details about the rendition case, which presumably included the names of high-ranking U.S. and Italian officials who facilitated and approved the operation.
The documents they were replaced with were redacted documents transmitted by Italian Intelligence.
As we’ve reported on extensively, evidence suggests that senior CIA leadership, namely former director John Brennan, sought to keep de Sousa imprisoned to cover up for the serious mistakes committed in the Milan Rendition case and to subsequently use her as a pawn in the SpyGate affair.
In February during his confirmation hearings CIA Director nominee William Burns was asked whether he would pledge not to prosecute, or prejudice in any way the career development of, any officer who participated in the rendition program under the direction of superior officers. He said he would not. No member of Congress asked him whether he would prevent foreign countries from taking actions against those officers however, despite Italy’s ongoing actions against de Sousa.
Burns was confirmed as CIA Director last week.