Former CIA operative of Goan origin detained in Lisbon

PANJIM: A former CIA agent Sabrina de Sousa is in the news after she was detained in Lisbon earlier this week and is to be extradited to Italy where she faces a four year jail sentence for allegedly kidnapping a terror suspect in 2003. The kidnapping was allegedly orchestrated by the US when de Sousa was working with the CIA. 

What makes de Sousa’s story interesting to Herald readers is that she was born in Goa in 1956, brought up in Bombay and later migrated to Portugal and US, holding dual American and Portuguese citizenship. Herald learns that she has her roots in Velim and has even visited her mother Olga Lemos Furtado in Goa in the past. Reports suggest that when she was detained earlier this week, she was on her way to India to meet with relatives.

Sousa and 25 other US citizens have been charged by Italian authorities with being involved in a CIA operation kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, who is also known as Abu Omar. He was taken from Milan to Egypt where he was imprisoned and was allegedly tortured. 

The International Business Tribune reports that the US suspected Nasr, an Egyptian cleric, of being a member of Islamist militant group al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah and kidnapped him as part of the CIA’s now-defunct extraordinary rendition program. The covert operation sparked a controversy in Italy, leading to the convictions of a number of high-ranking Italian intelligence officials connected to the ‘Imam Rapito’ or ‘Kidnapped Imam’ case. Some of these officials have since been pardoned. IBT further reports that she claims to have played no role in the kidnapping, though she asserts that she was an undercover CIA operative. 

Further reports say that though she is not alleged to have kidnapped Nasr herself, she helped make false documents to mislead investigators. But de Sousa claims that when the kidnapping took place she was on vacation at a ski resort in Madonna de Campiglio, Italy.

According to The New York Times, when Nasr was kidnapped, de Sousa was in Milan posing as a diplomat. She resigned in 2009 and was convicted in absentia and sentenced to four years in prison. If she is extradited to Italy, she would have to serve her sentence there. 

Sousa was earlier arrested by the Portuguese authorities in October 2015 in connection with the same case, but was later released

Herald got in touch with her lawyer in Portugal but is yet to receive a reply.