LISBON, Portugal—A Portuguese court has ruled that a former CIA operative convicted of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric as part of an extraordinary renditions program should be turned over to Italy to serve her six-year sentence there, a court official said Friday.
The decision to extradite Sabrina De Sousa after her arrest last October was handed down on Tuesday, the president of the court in Lisbon, Luis Vaz das Neves, told The Associated Press.
De Sousa, who operated under diplomatic cover in Italy, was among 26 Americans convicted in absentia for the kidnapping of Milan cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, in broad daylight from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.
Extraordinary renditions were part of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Egyptian cleric’s kidnapping, which also implicated Italy’s secret services, has proven embarrassing to successive Italian governments.
De Sousa, who was born in India and holds both U.S. and Portuguese passports, was initially acquitted due to diplomatic immunity, but was found guilty by Italy’s highest court in 2014. She was arrested at Lisbon Airport on a European warrant last year as she was on her way to visit her elderly mother in India with a round-trip ticket.
Authorities seized her passport and set her free while awaiting the court decision on her extradition.
Manuel Magalhaes e Silva, De Sousa’s Portuguese lawyer, told the AP in an email he was officially informed of the extradition decision Friday and intends to lodge an appeal at the Supreme Court. If that fails, he will go to the Constitutional Court, he said.
De Sousa has argued against extradition to Italy, telling a Portuguese court after her arrest that Italian authorities tried her in absentia and never officially notified her of her conviction, according to Vaz das Neves.
