A former Central Intelligence Agency spy of Indian origin who was recently pardoned by Italy believes the Donald Trump administration stopped her extradition from Portugal and secured her release at the last moment. Sabrina de Sousa, 60, was arrested in Portugal on February 20 in connection with the abduction of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in 2003. She has denied involvement in the incident.

De Sousa, who grew up in Mumbai, is also a citizen of Portugal, where she has family. Her mother lived in Goa till she died on December 4, 2016. She could not visit her mother because she was not allowed to travel in connection with the investigation into the case.

De Sousa said she was not in Italy when Nasr was kidnapped as part of a CIA “extraordinary rendition” program, in which terror suspects are secretly transferred to a third country for interrogation. However, she was sentenced in absentia along with 25 other Americans in 2009.

In an interview to Reuters, she said the previous administration had abandoned her. “The disavowal policy by the Obama administration in my case has been very unfortunate,” she said. “But the Trump regime has been absolutely awesome... If the Trump administration didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything, I’m very confident I’d be in an Italian jail.”

She is writing a book about her experience. “It’s not going to be a book ‘oh, poor me, look what happened to me’,” she said, adding that it will discuss the case and its impact on individual intelligence officers, like herself.