Ex-CIA spy freed in Portugal, avoids extradition over kidnapping

By Andrei Khalip and Pedro Moreira LISBON (Reuters) - A former CIA officer convicted of involvement in the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Italy was released on Wednesday after winning a last-minute reprieve from extradition. Sabrina de Sousa, a dual U.S.-Portuguese citizen, was waiting at Lisbon airport to be flown to Italy early on Wednesday when word came she was to be released, after Italy's president granted her a partial pardon. "I'm happy with how this worked out here after two years of having this troubling my mind," a smiling de Sousa told reporters as she left the Judiciary Police headquarters. "But this is not over yet, as I still have the process in Italy, and we have to see how it goes." The partial pardon by Italian President Sergio reduced her sentence to three years from four. That means she can apply for alternatives to a prison sentence. "We will now await the Italian court's decision on alternative sanctions to prison, which is likely to be community service," her lawyer, Manuel Magalhaes e Silva, who accompanied de Sousa out of the police building, told Reuters. "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," he had explained earlier. After the Italian prosecutor's decision, a court in Lisbon ordered that she be released. De Sousa is one of 26 people convicted in absentia over the abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from a Milan street in 2003. He was taken to Egypt for questioning under the U.S. "extraordinary rendition" programme put in place by the administration of then-President George W. Bush. De Sousa has maintained her innocence, saying she was not in Milan on the day of the abduction. She had been optimistic that the extradition would be halted after she asked the new U.S. administration for help, her lawyer said. The lawyer said De Sousa is likely to be allowed to serve three years of community service which, under European Union rules, she can do in Portugal. He said earlier that de Sousa wanted to clear her name and would probably appeal at some point, but upon her release he said: "We will just wait for the community service authorisation to come through now, and then see." De Sousa, who left the CIA in 2009, was held in Portugal in October 2015 at the request of Italian prosecutors. Her passports were confiscated, but she was quickly released then. Several of her appeals against extradition failed last year. The CIA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence in the United States declined to comment. (Editing by Larry King)