image credit: culture of war torture
An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that a former officer of the Central Intelligence Agency is to be extradited to Italy, where she faces charges of helping kidnap a man as part of a secret operation [aka extraordinary rendition] sponsored by the United States government. Sabrina De Sousa, 59, was an accredited diplomat stationed at the US consulate in Milan, Italy, in 2003, when a CIA team kidnapped Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from a Milan street in broad daylight. Nasr, who goes by the nickname Abu Omar, is a former member of Egyptian militant group al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, and was believed by the CIA to have links to al-Qaeda. Soon after his abduction, Nasr was renditioned to Egypt, where he says he was brutally tortured, raped, and held illegally for years before being released without charge.
Source: Portuguese appeals court orders extradition of ex-CIA officer to Italy
Be interesting to know what is going on behind the scene. All these type of things are not what they appear ……. so what gives?
LikeLike
As best I can make out, Tube, this relates to what we in New Zealand refer to the “decline of the Washington consensus.” In both New Zealand and Australia, China is our primary trading partner and there is a clear sense that American power is waning, both economically and and militarily (Obama has suffered numerous foreign policy reversals, particularly in Syria and the Ukraine).
Add to this that most non-Americans hate the US government, and you see numerous upstarts such as Portugal and Italy endeavoring to call the US to account for their violations of international law.
This is just my opinion, of course.
LikeLike