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| U.S. Promoting Double Standard: CIA Kidnapping Suspect | | By SUNITA SOHRABJI | | | indiawest.com | October 08, 2009 06:06:00 PM |
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The lawyer for former U.S. government diplomat Sabrina de Sousa, charged with involvement in the 2003 Milan kidnapping of Muslim cleric Abu Omar, says the government is promoting a double standard by invoking diplomatic immunity for only one of the 26 Americans allegedly involved in the case.
The Department of Defense is using Status of Forces immunity, also known as SOFA, for Air Force Lt. Col. Joseph Roman, who was also indicted in the case along with de Sousa and 24 others. The immunity for Romano has been approved by President Barack Obama and members of his cabinet, said Mark Zaid, de Sousa’s attorney, in an e-mail, but no similar action has been taken for de Sousa.
 In a 2006 warrant for her arrest, Italian prosecutors accused Mumbai native de Sousa of working as an undercover CIA officer from her post at the U.S. Consulate in Milan, and alleged she was involved in a plot to kidnap Omar — also known as Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr — who reportedly belonged to an organization plotting the overthrow of Egypt. Omar was also believed to have links to al-Qaeda (I-W, May 22).
De Sousa has denied any involvement in the kidnappings, saying she was skiing more than 130 miles from Milan at the time of the incident. She filed suit against the U.S. State Department May 13, asking for diplomatic immunity and protection from the Italian government.
“While I was not involved with the alleged rendition, no actions that I undertook while posted in Italy in the service of the United States government was unauthorized by superiors or determined on my own,” said de Sousa, in an e-mail from Zaid.
“I feel betrayed by my government and cannot understand its refusal to protect those who serve its diplomatic interests abroad,” added de Sousa, who cannot travel abroad for fear of arrest, and thus cannot visit her ailing mother in India. She resigned from federal employment in 2009, after her diplomatic passport was cancelled.
The State Department has not responded to her suit, but in August agreed to pay her legal fees, Zaid told India-West.
“If the U.S. government is willing to pay for Ms. de Sousa’s Italian legal defense, thereby essentially admitting that she was acting in the scope of her official employment, why has the government refused to invoke diplomatic immunity,” he queried.
SOFA can only cover military personnel, so Romano is the only person eligible under its provisions, but de Sousa and several others are eligible for diplomatic, or consular, immunity.
In her lawsuit, de Sousa claimed she contacted several government officials in both the executive and legislative branches to invoke diplomatic immunity, without success. In early 2009, she said she tried to alert the Obama’s administration about her case, again without any action taken.
“Having exhausted every internal and external option, I was forced to make a difficult choice,” she told India-West in an earlier story.
If convicted, de Sousa faces a minimum of five years in jail, but it is unlikely she would have to serve a jail sentence if she continues to remain in the U.S., said Zaid, adding that the U.S. is unlikely to allow her to be extradited.
A spokeswoman for the State Department told India-West that de Sousa worked for the department from August 1998 to February 2009, when she resigned, but could not specify what countries she worked in or what her title was. The lawsuit states that she was a “second secretary” at the U.S. embassy in Rome and at the consulate in Milan.
De Sousa grew up in Mumbai and went to high school in Darjeeling. She became a citizen of the U.S. in 1985. |
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