Sabrina de Sousa, who was convicted for her role in the Bush-era ‘extraordinary rendition’ of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar, granted last-minute partial pardon

A former CIA officer who was poised to become the first intelligence official to face jail in connection to crimes committed during George W Bush’s “war on terror” has been granted a last-minute pardon by Italy.

Sabrina de Sousa, who was convicted in absentia in 2009 for playing a part in the extraordinary rendition of a radical Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar, was expected to arrive in Italy from Portugal this week to serve a four-year sentence following months of legal wrangling over her controversial conviction.

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But the office of Sergio Mattarella, the Italian president, released a statement late on Tuesday saying that De Sousa had been granted a partial pardon, which would reduce her four-year sentence of detention by one year. The statement said that De Sousa would be able to serve her sentence with “alternative measures” to detention, meaning that she could avoid spending any time in jail.

The statement did not clarify whether De Sousa, who is a dual US and Portuguese citizen, would have to remain in Italy to serve the sentence.

Mattarella’s office said the act of mercy reflected the “attitude” that had been shown by De Sousa, who actively sought clemency but has also maintained that she was innocent of any crime and that she deserved to be protected under diplomatic immunity.

Mattarella’s office said the decision also reflected the fact that the US had “interrupted” the Bush-era practice of extraordinary renditions, a classified counter-terrorism programme in which terror suspects were kidnapped and taken to black sites, where they were tortured.

The news will likely be met with relief by the US and Italian governments and will mean that the two countries will avoid diplomatic tensions ahead of Donald Trump’s planned visit to Italy in May, when the US president attends the G7 meeting of world leaders in Sicily.

De Sousa, who is 61, had in effect been under house arrest in Portugal since 2015, after she made the decision to leave the US and travel to Portugal to visit her family despite the fact that she was the subject of a European arrest warrant. She was stopped from leaving the country and had her passport confiscated.

After more than a year of legal wrangling over her case, De Sousa was taken into custody by Portuguese authorities last week and had been expected to arrive in Italy this week.

The case has been a thorny issue between the US and Italy ever since the former CIA officer became one of more than a dozen officials to be convicted in absentia in 2009 for playing a part in the kidnapping of Omar.

De Sousa, who has always claimed she was a low-level scapegoat for crimes committed by senior Bush administration officials in connection to the “war on terror”, has been a vocal critic of the US government and the rendition programme.

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She has told the Guardian in multiple interviews since 2015 that the US government failed to adequately use back channels in Italy to secure a pardon for her, even as the Obama administration successfully lobbied for the pardon of other CIA officials who were convicted in the Omar case.



The case against De Sousa and more than a dozen other CIA officers was brought by an independent Italian prosecutor who investigated the rendition and pieced together the US involvement in Omar’s kidnapping through a forensic investigation of telephone records, among other investigative tools. The case has never been formally backed by the Italian government, which had never sought De Sousa’s extradition from the US or that of any other US officials.

An attorney for De Sousa was not immediately available for comment.

In an interview with McClatchy in 2013, De Sousa alleged that the former CIA station chief in Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, had exaggerated the threat Omar posed to win approval for the rendition in Washington, which she claimed had been approved by the then CIA director, George Tenet.

Omar, who now lives in Egypt, has come to De Sousa’s defence, saying he believed she ought to be pardoned and that she had helped to expose the “injustices” in his case.