Ex-CIA officer to avoid jail over abduction of Egyptian cleric in Italy

A former CIA officer convicted in absentia by Italy for helping to abduct a radical Egyptian cleric in Milan will not be sent to jail after receiving a partial pardon, her lawyer said on Wednesday.

Sabrina de Sousa was due to serve four years in jail for the George W Bush-era extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar, the then-imam of Milan, in February 2003.

However, Sergio Mattarella, the Italian president, said on Tuesday that De Sousa had been granted a partial pardon, which would reduce her four-year sentence to one.

This lesser one-year sentence will not be served in prison.

De Sousa, 61, is a dual Portuguese-US citizen who worked as an undercover agent for the CIA.

She was arrested in Portugal in February, and was expected to be deported to Italy this week.

However, her lawyer, Manuel Magalhaes e Silva, told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday: "She was in the airport this morning to be handed over to Italy, but is no longer there. She is not free yet, but will be released today. 

"The Milan prosecutor revoked the detention order. The Italian Interpol agents who are here to extradite her have been informed and the extradition is no longer happening."

The former CIA officer was one of more than a dozen officials to be convicted in absentia in 2009 for their part in the kidnapping of Omar.

The US believed Omar had links to militant groups. Italian police were also monitoring his activities in an operation disrupted by the so-called "rendition".

Omar was abducted in Milan and transported to the Aviano Air Base, a NATO base in northern Italy.

From there he was moved to Egypt, where he was interrogated, tortured and abused.

He was released by an Egyptian court in 2007, which ruled that his detention was "unfounded".

Omar has strongly denied any links to militant groups.

The case against de Sousa was brought by an independent Italian prosecutor and was never formally backed by the Italian government, which had never sought extradition from the US for any of those involved in the case.

De Sousa has always insisted she was a low-level scapegoat, and has been a vocal critic of the US government and its "extraordinary rendition" programme of abductions during Bush's "war on terror".

In an interview with McClatchy in 2013, De Sousa accused the former CIA station chief in Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, of exaggerating the threat posed by Omar to win Washington's approval for the rendition.

She claimed the rendition had been approved by the then-CIA director, George Tenet.

Omar, who now lives in Egypt, has said De Sousa ought to be pardoned and praised her for helping to expose the "injustices" in his case.