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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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May 13th,
2009 - Woman in Rendition Case Sues for Immunity |
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Woman in Rendition Case Sues
for Immunity By Scott Shane New York Times May 13, 2009 Washington - A former
American official charged with kidnapping in Italy in the 2003 seizure of a
radical Muslim cleric filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to force the State
Department to invoke diplomatic immunity to halt the prosecution. Italian prosecutors have
claimed that the former official, Sabrina De Sousa, 53, was a C.I.A. officer
serving under diplomatic cover in the United States Consulate in Milan at the
time the cleric, known as Abu Omar, was grabbed on the street by American
counterterrorism officers. He was flown to Egypt, where
he later contended that he was tortured. The case became a symbol of the
American practice of rendition, in which a terrorism suspect is captured and
delivered to another country for interrogation. In the lawsuit, filed in
United States District Court in Washington, and in an interview, Ms. De Sousa
described herself as a diplomat and denied that she had worked for the
Central Intelligence Agency. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment
on Ms. De Sousa or her lawsuit, but former agency officials said that she had
worked for the C.I.A. in Italy. The lawsuit asks the court
to order the government to invoke diplomatic immunity, provide her with legal
counsel in Italy and pay her legal bills and other costs associated with the
case. Italian investigators found
Ms. De Sousa’s phone number in the cellphone of a C.I.A. officer involved in
the rendition, and she was among 25 alleged C.I.A. officers and one American
military officer indicted in the case in 2006. In lurid Italian news
accounts, Ms. De Sousa has been described as “Sabrina the tiger, with
stiletto heels and fists of steel” and as the case’s Mata Hari. But she insists that she
played no role in the episode, which occurred in February 2003. In fact, Ms.
De Sousa said, she had been skiing with friends at the time, and she showed a
reporter for The New York Times credit card bills from that time for ski
rental and a hotel in Madonna di Campligio, 130 miles from Milan. Ms. De Sousa, who grew up in
India and became a naturalized American citizen in 1985, said that most of
her family lived overseas and that since the indictment government officials
had strongly advised her not to travel abroad for fear of arrest or other legal
complications. She said she resigned from government service in February
because she felt torn between the government’s instructions and her desire to
visit her family. “I had to choose between my
job and my family,” Ms. De Sousa said in an interview at the Washington
office of her lawyer, Mark S. Zaid. “The government sent me to Italy to
represent this country and then basically abandoned me.” Ms. De Sousa called it
“inexplicable” that the government had not invoked diplomatic immunity. “I’m
still at a loss as to why this country is allowing the case to head toward
conviction,” she said. State Department officials
declined to comment, noting that the case is at a highly sensitive stage. In
March, Italy’s Constitutional Court ruled that Italian prosecutors had
violated state secrecy in gathering evidence in the case, and it is uncertain
whether the prosecution will continue. But the State Department
officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, that they had been very active
and “are pursuing every avenue to try to bring this case to a satisfactory
resolution.” They noted that most of the alleged officers charged in the
rendition were not under diplomatic cover and would not qualify for immunity. Legal experts said that
intelligence officers serving under diplomatic cover often claim immunity
when facing criminal charges overseas. But Curtis A. Bradley, a Duke law
professor specializing in international law, cautioned that “consular
immunity,” the category that presumably would apply to Ms. De Sousa, was
limited by treaty to “acts performed in the exercise of consular functions.” Mr. Bradley said the
rendition might not qualify under that definition, suggesting that pressing
the immunity issue might not automatically free Ms. De Sousa from the prosecution. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14diplo.html |