By Haggai Carmon

Former U.S. government employee Sabrina De Sousa (53) has sued the State Department for diplomatic immunity.

According to Italian officials, she is one of the 26 U.S. agents who participated in a CIA-orchestrated kidnapping that abducted a militant Egyptian clergy member working in Milan and transported him to his native country. De Sousa is after immunity from prosecution in Italy.

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, the cleric kidnapped in February 2003, says he was incarcerated and tortured in Egypt. He is no longer in prison.

In Italy, an arrest warrant has been issued for De Sousa and the other 25 allegedly involved. De Sousa has been named one of the four main participants in the operation, but all 26 were indicted in 2007.

Although a naturalized American citizen, De Sousa was born in India. Her mother is still living there, and her siblings are in Europe. She says she was ordered not to travel internationally lest she be arrested, which means she has not been able to visit her scattered family.

It is believed by Italian officials that the kidnapping was part of a CIA rendition program, in which the CIA captured suspected terrorists and moved them to a third country for interrogation. When asked whether De Sousa worked for the CIA, her lawyer replied that she was “a federal employee working for the State Department.”

She no longer works for the government, having quit in February of this year, but she does not understand why diplomatic immunity has not been invoked in the kidnapping case. At the time, De Sousa was working as a consular official in Milan (though she says she was on vacation when Nasr disappeared). Her consular role, however, would seem to qualify her for consular immunity.

De Sousa believes politics may be to blame and by suing her previous employer is looking to have the problem “go away once and for all.” She asks rhetorically of the U.S. government, “If you’re going to fight this war on terror, are you going to protect your people?”

In Italy, meanwhile, the prosecution experienced a set back because an Italian court ruled certain evidence inadmissible due to the unlawful way in which it was procured. The prosecution is undeterred, however, and a hearing is scheduled for this month.