01/18/16 – Jason Leopold – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, Scott Horton Show.
Our guest today is our good friend Jason Leopold.
He's the author of the books Off the Record, The Other Abu Zubaydah, and News Junkie.
Of course, he writes for Vice, and yet this one is for Al Jazeera, America.
AlJazeera.com, written way back in June of 2014, actually, is going to be the story we're talking about today.
But it's relevant because of the new news and all of this and that.
Welcome back to the show, Jason.
How are you?
Doing well, Scott.
Thanks.
Just as a note, the story you're referring to in Al Jazeera about spleen disease, I've actually written some follow-up stories about her for Vice News over the past few weeks.
In fact, I also produced a documentary about her case or efforts to clear her name over here at Vice News.
Oh, man, I'm way behind on your work then.
I'm very sorry about that.
That's okay.
We started out at Al Jazeera, America and just kind of followed it along as I made my way here.
Yeah, lots to talk about.
I think this Al Jazeera piece, I'm pretty sure I interviewed you about it at the time.
I certainly remember reading about it.
It's a very important story.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
Let me shut up and let you tell the story to the people about what happened here and what's her role in it and what the hell is going on and why anybody cares.
Sure.
Well, you know, this is a story about a rendition, a notorious rendition that took place in February of 2003 in Milan.
A rendition that was jointly conducted, well, it was actually conducted by the CIA with the cooperation of Italian intelligence services and Italian police.
It was the rendition of a radical cleric known as Abu Omar, whose fiery anti-American speeches after 9-11 caught the attention of the CIA.
He was rendered to Egypt.
He's an Egyptian.
And he said that he was brutally tortured there in Egypt.
He was released some time later, gave an account of what took place.
But he was also under investigation in Italy.
And under investigation for what was believed at the time to be his efforts in recruiting jihadists.
That's how the Italian authorities described it.
Jihadists to go over to Afghanistan and Iraq to fight Americans.
The Italian authorities undertook an investigation into his disappearance.
What they found was that this was a rendition conducted illegally.
The lead prosecutor in the case called it a kidnapping, violated Italy's sovereignty.
And that 26 Americans, most of whom were CIA officers, were responsible for it.
One, and they were all later indicted, prosecuted and convicted for this rendition.
One of those officers...
In absentia, right.
In absentia, yes.
None of them ever served any jail time.
One of the officers is a woman named Sabrina D'Souza.
She has been, for the past 10 years, trying to clear her name for being tagged in this rendition.
She said she had nothing to do with it.
She was a translator between the Italians and the CIA snatch team early on.
But then was later when she said, you know, kind of cut out of the operation.
And on the day that it took place, she was chaperoning a ski trip for her son, for which she says she can prove with receipts and other evidence.
But this rendition just became a huge, huge embarrassment for the US, who to this day does not acknowledge that it even took place, and inflamed tensions between the US and Italy.
In her quest to clear her name, Sabrina D'Souza, who has since resigned from the CIA, and by the way, she was also operating under diplomatic cover when she was working in Italy, so she was officially listed as a State Department employee.
But in her quest to clear her name, she has kind of been disclosing some information over the years about what took place, and why it took place, and raising some questions about the fact that it was, or declaring that it was illegal.
And so in her effort to clear her name, she took off last year for Portugal.
She happens to hold dual citizenship.
She's a Portuguese US citizen.
And she took off for Portugal in hopes of hooking up with some human rights lawyers and a member of European Parliament who's been very, very outspoken about Europe's role in the CIA's rendition program.
That's Anna Gomez.
And I met with her out in Portugal, along with some members of our news team here.
We filmed a documentary with her about her efforts, what she was trying to do to clear her name.
A few days after we met with her, she went, and by the way, let me, I'm sorry, digress a moment.
There's an active European arrest warrant out for her and all of the other CIA officials, officers who were indicted.
So her travel, she traveled to Portugal through Morocco.
So, knowing that there was this European arrest warrant.
After I met with her in Portugal, she went to the airport there in Lisbon and was getting ready to board a plane to visit her mother in India for her birthday.
And she was detained.
She was detained and forced to turn over her passport.
While Portugal, a Portuguese judge determined whether or not she should be extradited to Italy to serve a sentence.
She was sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison for un-kidnapping charges.
And what happened was, last week, a judge, in this case, decided that, yes, Sabrina D'Souza, despite the fact that she's also a Portuguese citizen, needs to be extradited to Italy.
And that is basically what's happening now.
What was very interesting, by the way, is out of the blue, right around Christmas time, some news broke that Italy, the president of Italy was going to pardon, gave a full pardon to one of the CIA officers who was involved in this rendition.
It just came out of the blue.
No one expected it.
And gave a partial pardon, basically, which amounted to a reduced sentence, to the CIA station chief in Milan, his name is Robert Leidy, who was sentenced to, I believe, nine years, and that was reduced to seven.
So, this is really kind of surfacing.
This case, which is going on 13, next month will be 13 years old, this case is still a major source of strife between the US and Italy, and now Portugal's involved.
And now, with the ruling that Sabrina D'Souza should be extradited to Italy, it threatens to reveal new information about exactly what happened.
Alright, well, so, we'll stop right there and take this break, and then when we get back, I guess we'll pick it up from there, and then follow-up questions.
It's the great journalist Jason Leopold on the story of Sabrina D'Souza, the CIA officer being extradited to Italy to serve time for conspiracy to torture a man.
Well, kidnap him.
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All right.
Well, before the show is in a hurry to reread the one I'd read before from a long time ago, and it escaped my attention that, of course, Jason has stayed on this story all along.
If I can try to sum it up very quickly here, the CIA kidnapped this guy, Abu Omar, in Italy back in, what was it, 2003?
And she was just barely in on it, but indicted with the rest of them.
And in trying to clear her own name, she basically blew the whistle on the CIA guys who put her up to it and that she worked with on the thing.
But then she made what seems like, and I'm sorry, you can get back to your train of thought after the break if you can remember where we were, but I'm curious, Jason Leopold, who's written a ton of this for ViceNews.com, Sabrina D'Souza is her name.
Why did she go to Portugal?
I mean, obviously she had reason to go to Portugal, but didn't she have a lot of reason to not go to Portugal?
I mean, sorry, Mom, I'd like to hug you, but we got Skype.
But if I go there, they're going to put me in prison.
Yeah, well, you know, I asked her about that when she was detained last October.
And I wrote about it.
I asked her that question.
And she said that she knew she was taking a risk.
She was well aware of it.
But she wants to, you know, what she said, she wants to live freely again.
She actually wanted to settle in Portugal, completely disillusioned with the U.S., with the way she's been treated by the U.S. government.
You know, she sued the State Department for failing to invoke diplomatic immunity, which she said she was entitled to.
So she wanted to, you know, to settle down in Portugal.
And she was well aware of the risk that she was taking.
But she also had a plan.
Her plan was to work with a member of European Parliament in Portugal in an effort to clear her name.
And, you know, let me just say that this prosecution, although it was in absentia, remains to this day the only successful prosecution, the only prosecution, involving CIA officers in connection with the so-called rendition, detention, and interrogation program.
And next month, Italy, the president of Italy, is coming to the U.S. to meet with President Obama.
And it's my understanding that this issue, this rendition, and Sabrina's case, Sabrina Azusa's case, will be one of the topics to discuss.
So her years-long effort, decade-long effort, to clear her name may actually pay off.
And she may actually end up without pardon.
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that, politically speaking, the Italians, if she can play it right, they might like to use her to make a point against the rest that, like, no, we're not going to go after the least involved of the involved here at the expense of the others.
But then again, like you're saying, they've already made a deal to let the station chief and the top leaders of the plot go free, right?
Yeah, well, you know, the station chief, he's not exactly free.
I mean, he had – this was a guy who also wanted to, you know, settle down in Italy.
He had a villa there that was seized.
And the other one who was – the woman who did receive a full pardon, you know, basically what the president of Italy said in a statement, she wasn't really involved.
What was really interesting about the, you know, rationale behind coming out for these – announcing these pardons now, the president of Italy said that, well, you know, President Obama ended the extraordinary rendition program, and that's why he's doing it.
That's not exactly true.
He still – you know, this administration under – you know, it's not the same the way that, you know, George W. Bush did it.
Well, stop for a second here because I think people may not know the difference between this, that, and the other thing.
There's a difference between the CIA and their own black sites in different countries torturing people, whereas the extraordinary rendition program means something else.
It means exporting them to third countries to be tortured on our behalf, basically.
Right.
That's right.
And, yes, there's a major difference.
And I'm not saying that the CIA is definitely not torturing somebody at black sites somewhere because I don't know that that's true.
All I'm saying is that I'm trying to make sure that everybody's on the same page as what we are talking about here.
Right.
There is a difference between, you know, what's called extraordinary rendition and just rendition.
So, you know, so it's interesting.
What's amazing, Scott, is that this case, you know, this issue about, you know, the rendition of this cleric has, you know, been written about extensively for, you know, for years, for 13 years.
And, you know, Sabrina D'Souza shared a number of documents with me that she's obtained actually through the Freedom of Information Act and, you know, in the form of letters basically showing that, you know, the CIA and intelligence officials told her to, you know, not worry, nothing will ever happen to her, that, you know, just sit tight and this thing will blow over.
And, you know, they were wrong, you know, on all counts.
It came down to, you know, trying to, for her at least, to get some protection, relief.
You know, she was, you know, what she feels is that she was, you know, she feels that she was thrown under the bus.
And, you know, as I mentioned, you know, when I was in Portugal last October doing this documentary with her, I mean, there was some revealing info about, you know, about what she was trying, you know, to do at this point.
But it was, you know, although she said she knew she was taking a risk, being detained and now seeing this ruling that she should be extradited, what she says is it's completely, you know, unexpected.
Her lawyer said that they're going to appeal.
But obviously, you know, now that this threatens to, you know, fan the flames further, more information about the rendition could come out.
You know, she is determined to, you know, to call new witnesses, to kind of seek a new trial.
And clearly that's not something that the, you know, that this government, that the U.S. government thoroughly wants to see happen.
Because Italy as well was, you know, as I mentioned, their own intelligence services were, you know, officers were involved in this.
So, you know, again, this torture program, rendition program, 13 years later, you know, we're still confronting it.
And Abu Omar himself, which is what's very interesting, is when I spoke to the prosecutor who mounted, you know, who mounted this prosecution and took on this case, what he said to me was, you know, that, you know, if the CIA did not render, kidnap Abu Omar, Abu Omar would be in jail today.
He would be in jail on terrorism.
He would be convicted on terrorism charges.
And the fact that, you know, that the CIA rendered him, kidnapped him and brought him over to Egypt, actually derailed the prosecution of other people who are working with Abu Omar that they were, you know, that they were investigating.
So, you know, it's a very, very complicated tangled web of, you know, this post 9-11 fear where that the fallout just, you know, continues.
Oh, and what I was going to mention is that Abu Omar, he actually, he was also indicted and convicted in absentia on those terrorism charges from back in 2003.
But he is now suing the, he's now suing Italy at the European Court of Human Rights.
And, you know, there was a hearing in his case last year, because basically what he's saying is that he has not been made holy.
He has not been compensated for his suffering.
And, you know, an Italian court, in addition to agreeing that, you know, yes, he's prosecuted in absentia, also awarded him 1 million euros.
So he's saying that he hasn't been paid yet.
So that, you know, we're expecting a decision out of the European Court of Human Rights on that soon as well.
So, as you can tell, very complicated case here, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, there's so many different points to make here, and we're almost out of time.
But it seems like something really important and something that you highlight in at least that year and a half old Al Jazeera article here was about just how hard.
And I think you may have mentioned this a minute ago, just how hard she tried to go through the channels with all her whistleblowing, just like you're supposed to do when a whistleblower blows a whistle.
When everybody points their finger and accuses them of not doing it the right way.
Boy, oh, boy, did she try to go and check off every box and still got completely screwed in favor of her bosses.
Yeah, I did.
I did.
Anyway, and people can read that one.
That's exclusive scapegoating the whistleblower.
That's at Al Jazeera America.
But then look at Jason Leopold's great Sabrina D'Souza archive.
There's quite a few video and written pieces here at vice dot com, news dot vice dot com.
Thanks, Jason.
You're great.
Thanks, Scott.
Appreciate it.
I'll talk to you soon.
See you tomorrow.
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