Portuguese Court Paves Way for ex-CIA Agent's Extradition to Italy

Portugal's highest court has approved the extradition to Italy of a former CIA agent convicted over the kidnapping of an Egyptian imam as part of the agency's secret renditions program, a judicial source told AFP Saturday.

U.S. and Portuguese citizen Sabrina de Sousa, 59, lost her final appeal to avoid extradition to Italy, ordered by Lisbon's Court of Appeal in January and upheld by the country's Supreme Court in March.

The Constitutional Court ruled inadmissible earlier this week the argument of her lawyer, Manuel de Magalhaes e Silva, that she would not be guaranteed a fresh trial in Italy.

De Sousa was one of 23 Americans, including 22 CIA agents, convicted in 2009 by an Italian court over the 2003 abduction in Milan of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, better known as Abu Omar.

The cleric was flown to Egypt where his lawyers say he was tortured.

An Italian court of appeals confirmed prison terms of seven to nine years against the Americans in 2012.

De Sousa was was arrested in Lisbon in October 2015 under a European arrest warrant as she was about to board a flight to Goa in India where her mother lives, Portuguese media said.

In an interview with Portuguese weekly Expresso published on April 16, de Sousa said that she hoped she would be "cleared of all charges" in a new trial.

But she said that if her conviction was not overturned, she would prefer to serve her sentence in Italy instead of Portugal.