Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
^^ If story of her husband is true, then will the sister of Dr. Afia will dare to comeout and do what she did in all the fronts??? the story of husband cannot be verified and i think it was not verified, it was taken as it is... same like that guy at UK immigration who in order to make her wife stay back in Pakistan entered her name in the list of the persons prohibited to enter UK...
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
^ further the way the ahmed (Afia son) reacted on seeing his father, the video is still available on youtube.
[video]www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoHEB8-5JMo[/video]
I highly doubt what her ex husband says.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on…
If Afia was sold to Americans then in court she should have mentioned that she was arrested in Pakistan and got handed over to USA. But no, she did not. … Rather her defence in American court confirms that she got arrested on 18[SUP]th[/SUP] July 2008, in Afghanistan and that there is some truth in American story.
American claimed that she was observed near Ghazni governor’s compound on 17[SUP]th[/SUP] July 2008, and they started looking for her in the area. They entered a house looking for her and in one room Warrant officer put down his M-4 rifle on floor. Anyhow, from behind the curtain in that room, Afia picked up the rifle, challenged them, and tried to shoot them. [Please check reference at the end of this post]
Problem is not what American accused her in court. Problem is what Afia said in her defence.
… Well, what her defence was?
Her defence was that she is a woman of small size who could not have picked up M-4 from floor, challenged the soldiers and shot at the soldiers.
In her defence … what she did not said, mentioned, or claimed:
1: She did not say that she was already American prisoner before 18[SUP]th[/SUP] July, so it is impossible that she could be free in the house and could have attacked American soldiers.
2: She did not say that she was arrested in Pakistan and was handed over to Americans in Afghanistan, and since that day she is prisoner of Americans.
3: She did not contested the charge that she got arrested on 18[SUP]th[/SUP] July by warrant officers in Ghazni
All above shows that … Afia was actually got arrested on 18[SUP]th[/SUP] of July 2008, in Ghazni and in the room where Americans claim.
Only questionable thing is that if Americans are telling truth that she picked up the gun, challenged soldiers and shot at them … As that is what Americans claim and Afia denies.
Rest: whatever American claims Afia did not denied or contested in court, showing that she accepted those facts … and thus must be true.
So, Afia’s sympathisers (so-called Jihadis) who claim that she got arrested in 2003 from Pakistan, and that she was handed over to Americans, they are all lying.
Another lies of Afia sympathisers is that she was grey lady (also known as prisoner 650) that Muazzam Baig heard crying in Bagram prison, what Muazzam Baig mentioned in his book ‘Enemy Combatant’. Actually, prisoner 650 (grey lady) became icon for Afia by liars and propagandist of Afia Sympathisers who even today lie that Afia was prisoner 650 (grey lady). Well, their lies become obvious when one look at time Muazzam Baig left Bagram Prison, as he left Bagram Prison in February 2003 (as claimed by Muazzam Baig himself). At that time Afia was running about between America and Pakistan (she gone underground at the end of March 2003). That means, there is no chance for Afia to be Grey Lady. But liars never stop lying, due to their ignorance or they think they can keep making fool of masses with their emotional blackmail.
#08-687: Aafia Siddiqui Arrested for Attempting to Kill United States Officers in Afghanistan (2008-08-04)](#08-687: Aafia Siddiqui Arrested for Attempting to Kill United States Officers in Afghanistan (2008-08-04))
Here is American story that American government presented in court:
Dept of Justice:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, August 4, 2008
WWW.USDOJ.GOV
NSD
(202) 514-2007
TDD (202) 514-1888
Aafia Siddiqui Arrested for Attempting to Kill United States Officers in Afghanistan
NEW YORK- Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mark J. Mershon, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), and Raymond W. Kelly, the Police Commissioner of the City of New York, announced today the arrest of Aafia Siddiqui on charges related to her attempted murder and assault of United States officers and employees in Afghanistan. Siddiqui arrived in New York this evening and will be presented tomorrow before a United States Magistrate Judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. According to the Complaint filed in Manhattan federal court:
On July 17, 2008, officers of the Ghazni Province Afghanistan National Police (“ANP”) observed Siddiqui outside the Ghazni governor’s compound. ANP officers questioned Siddiqui, regarded her as suspicious, and searched her handbag. In it, they found numerous documents describing the creation of explosives, as well as excerpts from the Anarchist’s Arsenal. Siddiqui’s papers included descriptions of various landmarks in the United States, including in New York City. Siddiqui was also in possession of substances that were sealed in bottles and glass jars.
On July 18, 2008, a party of United States personnel, including two FBI special agents, a United States Army Warrant Officer, a United States Army Captain, and United States military interpreters, arrived at the Afghan facility where Siddiqui was being held. The personnel entered a second floor meeting room – unaware that Siddiqui was being held there, unsecured, behind a curtain.
The Warrant Officer took a seat and placed his United States Army M-4 rifle on the floor next to the curtain. Shortly after the meeting began, the Captain heard a woman yell from the curtain and, when he turned, saw Siddiqui holding the Warrant Officer’s rifle and pointing it directly at the Captain. Siddiqui said, “May the blood of [unintelligible] be directly on your [unintelligible, possibly head or hands].” The interpreter seated closest to Siddiqui lunged at her and pushed the rifle away as Siddiqui pulled the trigger. Siddiqui fired at least two shots but no one was hit. The Warrant Officer returned fire with a 9 mm service pistol and fired approximately two rounds at Siddiqui’s torso, hitting her at least once.
Despite being shot, Siddiqui struggled with the officers when they tried to subdue her; she struck and kicked them while shouting in English that she wanted to kill Americans. After being subdued, Siddiqui temporarily lost consciousness. The agents and officers then rendered medical aid to Siddiqui.
Siddiqui, a 36-year-old Pakistani woman who previously resided in the United States, is charged in a criminal Complaint filed in the Southern District of New York with one count of attempting to kill United States officers and employees and one count of assaulting United States officers and employees. If convicted, Siddiqui faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each charge.
Mr. Garcia praised the investigative work of the Joint Terrorism Task Force (“JTTF”), the Federal Bureau of Investigation and New York City Police Department. He also expressed his gratitude to the Office of International Affairs of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of State for their assistance in the case. Mr. Garcia also thanked the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts for their assistance.
Mr. Garcia said that the investigation is continuing.
Assistant United States Attorney Christopher L. Lavigne is in charge of the prosecution.
The charges and allegations contained in the Complaint are merely accusations and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on…
Petra Bartosiewiez is freelance investigative journalist who writes on American justice system and wrote a lot on what wrongs American justice system did to people accused of terrorism after 9/11. According to her (Petra) … Afia was detained by Afghan police on evening of 17[SUP]th[/SUP] July 2008. She was under detention in a room where American came to investigate her on 18[SUP]th[/SUP] July 2008.
She gives details of how Afia got detained by Afghan police (on eve of 17th July 2008) and what American claim … that is regarding Afia picking up M-4 and shooting at them (on 18th July 2008)… what ‘Petra’ believes could be concocted, as to her Afia story looks more straight forward.
‘Petra’ mentions what ‘Afia’ says regarding the incidence. Here is what Afia says about the incidence:
Siddiqui’s own version of the shooting is less complicated. As she explained it to a delegation of Pakistani senators who came to Texas to visit her in prison a few months after her arrest, she never touched anyone’s gun, nor did she shout at anyone or make any threats. She simply stood up to see who was on the other side of the curtain and startled the soldiers. One of them shouted, “She is loose,” and then someone shot her. When she regained consciousness she heard someone else say, “We could lose our jobs.”
Now, one can easily see from Afia version that she was not under American custody until the event on 18[SUP]th[/SUP] July 2008.
[The article was written before the trial]
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
^ further the way the ahmed (Afia son) reacted on seeing his father, the video is still available on youtube.
[video]www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoHEB8-5JMo[/video]
I highly doubt what her ex husband says.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Don't say anything which may prove her innocence by any chance, the member of this forum only take what Americans have to say on this and Americans says she is terrorist... then she is.. no matter what
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
^^^ Why are you twisting facts?
No one believes American lies unquestionably. But to accept what is true, and reject lies of whomever it maybe (Jihadis, Taliban, politicians, or whomever) does not mean a person is bias towards American claims.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
^^ Saeen jee
How can i dare to twist the fact, Afia is terrorist, Americans says that, Mushy says that... now who else we want....
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on…
Let me ask some simple questions
If you agree then please pray for her, try to raise your voice for her. Once she gets these basic rights and both parties are at arm length only then we will see whose narrative is correct and whose not.
Case Background is a good place to know about pro afia people point of view.
Please see it from humanitarian angle.
we let loose raymond davis and generally people who oppose afias right were hell bent to support raymond case.We believe every thing that western media says , lets hear what afia has to say.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on…
^^^ Bao Bahadur … Afia sympathisers may lie to fool those who accept their lies without thinking that Afia and ‘prisoner 650’ was same, but for me, when people claim that ‘prisoner 650’ was Afia, I remember Allah gave laanat to Liars and these people are lying (intentionally or unintentionally).
http://freeaafia.org/background.html
When first line of this site is lie (The family of Dr. Afia Siddiqui, Prisoner #650), I do not know how much lies are filled on the site. That is obvious, as Mauzam Baig mentioned ‘prisoner 650’ was present at Bagram prison when he was at Bagram prison, and since Muazam Baig left Bagram prison in early February 2003, the women ‘prisoner 650’ could not be Afia. Reason is simple, that is, Afia went underground at the end of March 2003, much after Muazam Baig left Bagram Prison.
Check the date:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moazzam_Begg
Detention in Afghanistan; February 2002 – February 2003
Detention in Guantanamo Bay; February 2003 – January 2005
He was transferred on 2 February 2003 to Guantanamo Bay
BBC news … dated 26 Feb 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2799903.stm
**A fourth man from the West Midlands has joined three others being held by the US authorities in Cuba.
The Foreign Office has confirmed that father-of-four, Moazzem Begg, was moved from Afghanistan to a holding facility at Guantanamo Bay two weeks ago.
How prisoner 650 became Afia?**
Yvonne Ridley read the book written by Muazzam Baig ‘Enemy combatant’. In that book, Muazzam Baig claims that when he was at Bagram prison, he use to hear screams of a woman who was recognized as ‘Prisoner 650’ and was also named as ‘Grey Lady’. Yvonne mistook her as Afia and reported it all over the place as Missing Afia (without even realising that it was impossible that Prisoner 650 was Afia). From there onwards this Grey Lady and Prisoner 650 got associated with Afia.**]
**
I agree that Afia should get justice. Anyhow, I do not know if she got justice or not from American courts, but I can say with certainty that what she is getting, she asked for it. No one asked Afia to cross Pakistani border into war-torn Afghanistan and play (as combatant) with people she considered enemy (even though she never mind going to that enemy country for education, money, career, and even to take part in terrorism).
My problem is not Afia but my problem is those Pakistanis who are showing height of hypocrisy all the time. They talk about Afia and forget what is happening to women under their nose in Pakistan. When it comes to women or human rights, many of these hypocrites are themselves Devil incarnate, much worse than any American could be. Let me ask you something:
Other than Afia, how much time you spent and how much effort you made in raising voices or doing something for those unfortunate women of Pakistan who are getting raped, sold, tortured, killed, mishandled, abused, burned, dehumanised, acid-attacked, beaten, buried alive, etc … every day by Pakistani police, men of all means, and even guardians of women?
Is it not true that people who are showing so much pain and sympathy towards Afia’s justified or unjustified suffering, when it comes to their own women folks, many of them are most brutal, abusive and inhumane … considering their women folks no better than low value animals?
My advice to you is, if you are so much concerned about injustices to women, leave Afia for a while and start looking at what you can do within Pakistan. I am posting some videos, see them carefully, and then think. Let see how big crowd you can gather to stop such atrocities, that is happening daily in Pakistan by police as well as others.
You should remember that Allah will ask you first on what you have done for women in your vicinity (Pakistan) where you can do something, before Allah opening your file regarding what you have done for Afia.
Here are videos … so see it and ponder … then do something before even thinking of Afia.
And there are many like above … so forget Afia, do something for these unfortunate women who did not choose to get raped and abused by presenting themselves as combatant to enemy (American in war-torn Afghanistan), and thus deserve sympathy and protection, not from enemy but hypocrite animals in Pakistan (and other Muslim countries) who call themselves Muslim.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
^ Please do spare some time to answer the issue at hand .
I am making my effort in this area as well alhumdolilah.
Yvone riddley and begg just highlighted the issue no one said that they themselves were present there, shaikh abu yahya libi was the first to tell about the ghost lady, which most belive was afia, it can be true , may be this was another unfortunate muslim lady, but does that make any difference.?
there is no terrorism charges on afia from americans ( apart form shooting incident)or is there any?
[QUOTE]
And there are many like above ... so forget Afia, do something for these unfortunate women who did not choose to get raped and abused by presenting themselves as combatant to enemy (American in war-torn Afghanistan), and thus deserve sympathy and protection, not from enemy but hypocrite animals in Pakistan (and other Muslim countries) who call themselves Muslim.
[/QUOTE]
This is where you go wrong again, why should we forget Afia when islam asks us not to forget the prisioners.
You have every right not to fight for her, but stopping others to fight for her is lame.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
^
Ok even if she did what was wrong is it not her right to get her freed?
What maximum punishment should be given for trying to kill a savage soldier?
Sadly our Ummat is at lowest these days.
Dude, i said it earlier that she should be freed as she can no longer be threat to anyone and even if she was guilty they should let her go as a good gesture.
And please stop bringing ummat in everything, that's one of the problems where EVERYTHING has to revolve around religion.
It is a fact that over 90% Pakistanis hate American interference in Pakistan and i am one of them (before you call me Yahoodi agent) but stop blaming America for everything and look at the problems of ummat first.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on…
I dont think we will ever know the truth of this case, as we are hearing what the Americans have got to say. We are not willing to believe the other party as it could be true too, many people from Pakistan were arrested and handed over to the Americans during golden period of Musharraf (he has boasted about that in his book). As far as Aafia Siddiqui is concerned both Americans and Pakistani authorities claim that she was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008. The trial that was conducted didnt include as to where she was in the period which her family considers as the missing period.
US verdict sparks Pakistan protests - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
^ Please do spare some time to answer the issue at hand .
I am making my effort in this area as well alhumdolilah.
Yvone riddley and begg just highlighted the issue no one said that they themselves were present there, shaikh abu yahya libi was the first to tell about the ghost lady, which most belive was afia, it can be true , may be this was another unfortunate muslim lady, but does that make any difference.?
You are not reading the post. I wrote (and that is true too) that Muazzam baig mentioned 'prisoner 650' and 'Grey Lady' in his book (Enemy Combatant), claiming that he use to hear ‘Prisoner 650’ screaming when he was at Bagram prison. That mean, person known as ‘Prisoner 650’ was at Bagram prison before Muazzam left Bagram Prison on 2nd Feb 2003. So, in no way ‘Prisoner 650’ could be Afia, and whoever tries to claim that is lying. Now the site you posted, this is claimed, shows that whoever is running the site is lying and has no respect.
[quote]
there is no terrorism charges on afia from americans ( apart form shooting incident)or is there any?
[/quote]
You are right that there are no such terrorism charges against her, but I am not judge to determine her prison terms. Nevertheless, charge of attacking soldier by detainees is always quite severe that could lead to long term prison sentences ... that does not mean Afia did attacked (shot at American soldier)... though she was accused of that and American court accepted that.
[quote]
This is where you go wrong again, why should we forget Afia when islam asks us not to forget the prisioners.
You have every right not to fight for her, but stopping others to fight for her is lame.
[/QUOTE]
By forgetting Afia, I do not mean ‘stop remembering’ but what I meant was ‘to keep aside’, ‘overlook’ or ‘stop thinking about’ ‘Afia’ and get involved in other good works of stopping atrocities towards women in Pakistan, as that is direct duty of all Pakistanis, is need of time, could bring result, and could benefit many.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on…
After listening so many accounts of this case , I am still confused 
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on…
The two allegations that were made on Aafia siddiqui while ‘arresting’ her were:
The case which was registered against her did not include point 1, where as the second one couldnt be proved. No investiagtion carried out over her 5 ‘missing years’.
Its an interesting article according to which the Americans had issued a global alert for her in 2003 as they thought her to be Alqaeda facilitator. In 2003 she along with her kids went towards the airport and then vanished, the family believed that she had been picked up by ISI. I think those five years should have been investigated as a part of the trial.
In any case, I dont think that we can ever get the bottom of this case. May Allah do justice with her!
Here’s the article from Guardian by Declan Walsh (Nov 2009).
The mystery of Dr Aafia Siddiqui | World news | The Guardian
On a hot summer morning 18 months ago a team of four Americans – two FBI agents and two army officers – rolled into Ghazni, a dusty town 50 miles south of Kabul. They had come to interview two unusual prisoners: a woman in a burka and her 11-year-old son, arrested the day before.
Afghan police accused the mysterious pair of being suicide bombers. What interested the Americans, though, was what they were carrying: notes about a “mass casualty attack” in the US on targets including the Statue of Liberty and a collection of jars and bottles containing “chemical and gel substances”.
**
At the town police station the Americans were directed into a room where, unknown to them, the woman was waiting behind a long yellow curtain. One soldier sat down, laying his M-4 rifle by his foot, next to the curtain. Moments later it twitched back.
The woman was standing there, pointing the officer’s gun at his head. A translator lunged at her, but too late. She fired twice, shouting “Get the **** out of here!” and “Allahu Akbar!” Nobody was hit. **As the translator wrestled with the woman, the second soldier drew his pistol and fired, hitting her in the abdomen. She went down, still kicking and shouting that she wanted “to kill Americans”. Then she passed out.
Whether this extraordinary scene is fiction or reality will soon be decided thousands of miles from Ghazni in a Manhattan courtroom. The woman is Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three. The description of the shooting, in July 2008, comes from the prosecution case, which Siddiqui disputes. What isn’t in doubt is that there was an incident, and that she was shot, after which she was helicoptered to Bagram air field where medics cut her open from breastplate to bellybutton, searching for bullets. Medical records show she barely survived. Seventeen days later, still recovering, she was bundled on to an FBI jet and flown to New York where she now faces seven counts of assault and attempted murder. If convicted, the maximum sentence is life in prison.
The prosecution is but the latest twist in one of the most intriguing episodes of America’s “war on terror”. At its heart is the MIT-educated Siddiqui, once declared the world’s most wanted woman. **In 2003 she mysteriously vanished for five years, during which time she was variously dubbed the “Mata Hari of al-Qaida” or the “Grey Lady of Bagram”, an iconic victim of American brutality. **
Yet only the narrow circumstances of her capture – did she open fire on the US soldier? – are at issue in the New York court case. Fragile-looking, and often clad in a dark robe and white headscarf, Siddiqui initially pleaded not guilty, insisting she never touched the soldier’s gun. Her lawyers say the prosecution’s dramatic version of the shooting is untrue. Now, after months of pre-trial hearings, she appears bent on scuppering the entire process.
During a typically stormy hearing last Thursday, Siddiqui interrupted the judge, rebuked her own lawyers and made strident appeals to the packed courthouse. “I am boycotting this trial,” she declared. “I am innocent of all the charges and I can prove it, but I will not do it in this court.” Previously she had tried to fire her lawyers due to their Jewish background (she once wrote to the court that Jews are “cruel, ungrateful, back-stabbing” people) and demanded to speak with President Obama for the purpose of “making peace” with the Taliban. This time, though, she was ejected from the courtroom for obstruction. “Take me out. I’m not coming back,” she said defiantly.
**
The trial, due to start in January, is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. It is a tale of spies and militants, disappearance and deception, which has played out in the shadowlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2001. In search of answers I criss-crossed Pakistan, tracking down Siddiqui’s relatives, retired ministers, shadowy spy types and pamphleteers. The truth was maddeningly elusive. But it all started in Karachi, the sprawling port city on the Arabian Sea where Siddiqui was born 37 years ago.**
Her parents were Pakistani strivers – middle-class folk with strong faith in Islam and education. Her father, Mohammad, was an English-trained doctor; her mother, Ismet, befriended the dictator General Zia ul-Haq. Aafia was a smart teenager, and in 1990 followed her older brother to the US. Impressive grades won her admission to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, later, Brandeis University, where she graduated in cognitive neuroscience. In 1995 she married a young Karachi doctor, Amjad Khan; a year later their first child, Ahmed, was born.
Siddiqui was also an impassioned Muslim activist. In Boston she campaigned for Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya; she was particularly affected by graphic videos of pregnant Bosnian women being killed. She wrote emails, held fundraisers and made forceful speeches at her local mosque. But the charities she worked with had sharp edges. The Nairobi branch of one, Mercy International Relief Agency, was linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in east Africa; three other charities were later banned in the US for their links to al-Qaida.
The September 11 2001 attacks marked a turning point in Siddiqui’s life. In May 2002 the FBI questioned her and her husband about some unusual internet purchases they had made: about $10,000 worth of night-vision goggles, body armour and 45 military-style books including The Anarchist’s Arsenal. (Khan said he bought the equipment for hunting and camping expeditions.) Their marriage started to crumble. A few months later the couple returned to Pakistan and divorced that August, two weeks before the birth of their third child, Suleman.
**On Christmas Day 2002 Siddiqui left her three children with her mother in Pakistan and returned to the US, ostensibly to apply for academic jobs. During the 10-day trip, however, Siddiqui did something controversial: she opened a post box in the name of Majid Khan, an alleged al-Qaida operative accused of plotting to blow up petrol stations in the Baltimore area. The post box, prosecutors later said, was to facilitate his entry into the US.
**
**Six months after her divorce, she married Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, at a small ceremony near Karachi. Siddiqui’s family denies the wedding took place, but it has been confirmed by Pakistani and US intelligence, al-Baluchi’s relatives and, according to FBI interview reports recently filed in court, Siddiqui herself. At any rate, it was a short-lived honeymoon.
**
Fowzia Siddiqui is the elder sister of Aafia Siddiqui. Photograph: Declan Walsh
**In March 2003 the FBI issued a global alert for Siddiqui and her ex-husband, Amjad Khan. Then, a few weeks later, she vanished. According to her family, she climbed into a taxi with her three children – six-year-old Ahmed, four-year-old Mariam and six-month old Suleman – and headed for Karachi airport. They never made it. (Khan, on the other hand, was interviewed by the FBI in Pakistan, and subsequently released.)
**
**Initially it was presumed that Siddiqui had been picked up by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) spy agency at the behest of the CIA. The theory seemed to be confirmed by American media reports that Siddiqui’s name had been given up by Mohammed, the 9/11 instigator, who was captured three weeks earlier. (If so, Mohammed was probably speaking under duress – the CIA waterboarded him 183 times that month.)
**
**There are several accounts of what happened next. According to the US government, Siddiqui was at large, plotting mayhem on behalf of Osama bin Laden. In May 2004 the US attorney general, John Ashcroft, listed her among the seven “most wanted” al-Qaida fugitives. “Armed and dangerous,” he said, describing the Karachi woman as a terrorist “facilitator” who was willing to use her education against America. “Al-Qaida Mom” ran the headline in the New York Post.
**
**But Siddiqui’s family and supporters tell a different story. Instead of plotting attacks, they say, Siddiqui spent the missing five years at the dreaded Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where she suffered unspeakable horrors. Yvonne Ridley, the British journalist turned Muslim campaigner, insists she is the “Grey Lady of Bagram” – a ghostly female detainee who kept prisoners awake “with her haunting sobs and piercing screams”. In 2005 male prisoners were so agitated by her plight, she says, that they went on hunger strike for six days.
**
**For campaigners such as Ridley, Siddiqui has become emblematic of dark American practices such as abduction, rendition and torture. “Aafia has iconic status in the Muslim world. People are angry with American imperialism and domination,” she told me.
**
But every major security agency of the US government – army, FBI, CIA – denies having held her. Last year the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson, went even further. She stated that Siddiqui was not in US custody “at any time” prior to July 2008. Her language was unusually categoric.
To reconcile these accounts I flew to Siddiqui’s hometown of Karachi. The family lives in a spacious house with bougainvillea-draped walls in Gulshan Iqbal, a smart middle-class neighbourhood. Inside I took breakfast with her sister, Fowzia, on a patio overlooking a toy-strewn garden.
As servants brought piles of paratha (fried bread), Fowzia produced photos of a smiling young woman whom she described as the victim of an international conspiracy. The US had been abusing her sister in Bagram, she said, then produced her for trial as part of a gruesome justice pageant. “As far as I’m concerned this trial [in New York] is just a great drama. They write the script as they go. I’ve stopped asking questions,” she said resignedly.
But Fowzia, a Harvard-educated neurologist, was frustratingly short on hard information. She responded to questions about Aafia’s whereabouts between 2003 and 2008 with cryptic cliches. “It’s not that we don’t know. It’s that we don’t want to know,” she said. And she blamed reports of al-Qaida links on a malevolent American press. “Half of them work for the CIA,” she said.
The odd thing, though, was that the person who might unlock the entire mystery was living in the same house. After being captured with his mother in Ghazni last year, 11-year-old Ahmed Siddiqui was flown back to Pakistan on orders from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Since then he has been living with his aunt Fowzia. Yet she has forbidden him from speaking with the press – even with Yvonne Ridley – because, she told me, he was too traumatised.
“You tell him to do something but he just stands there, staring at the TV,” she said, sighing heavily. But surely, I insisted, after 15 months at home the boy must have divulged some clue about the missing years?
Fowzia’s tone hardened. “Ahmed’s not allowed to speak to the press. That was part of the deal when they gave him to us,” she said firmly.
“Who are they?” I asked.
She waved a finger in the air. “The network. Those who brought him here.”
Moments later Fowzia excused herself. The interview was over. **As she walked me to the gate, I was struck by another omission: Fowzia had barely mentioned Ahmed’s 11-year-old sister, Mariam, or his seven-year-old brother, Suleman, who are still missing. **Amid the hullabaloo about their imprisoned mother, Aafia’s children seemed to be strangely forgotten.
That night I went to see Siddiqui’s ex-husband, Amjad Khan. He ushered me through a deathly quiet house into an upstairs room where we sat cross-legged on the floor. He had a soft face under the curly beard that is worn by devout Muslims. I recounted what Fowzia told me. He sighed and shook his head. “It’s all a smokescreen,” he said. “She’s trying to divert your attention.”
The truth of the matter, he said, was that Siddiqui had never been sent to Bagram. Instead she spent the five years on the run, living clandestinely with her three children, under the watchful eye of Pakistani intelligence. He told me they shifted between Quetta in Baluchistan province, Iran and the Karachi house I had visited earlier that day. It was a striking explanation. When I asked for proof, he started at the beginning.
Their parents, who arranged the marriage, thought them a perfect match. The couple had a lot in common – education, wealth and a love for conservative Islam. They were married over the phone; soon after Khan moved to America. But his new wife was a more fiery character than he wished. “She was so pumped up about jihad,” he said.
Six months into the marriage, Siddiqui demanded the newlyweds move to Bosnia. Khan refused, and grew annoyed at her devotion to activist causes. During a furious argument one night, he told me, he flung a milk bottle at his wife that split her lip.
**After 9/11 Aafia insisted on returning to Pakistan, telling her husband that the US government was forcibly converting Muslim children to Christianity. Later that winter she pressed him to go on “jihad” to Afghanistan, where she had arranged for them to work in a hospital in Zabul province. Khan refused, sparking a vicious row. “She went hysterical, beating her hands on my chest, asking for divorce,” he recalled.
**
After Siddiqui disappeared in March 2003, Khan started to worry for his children – he had never seen his youngest son, Suleman. But he was reassured that they were still in Pakistan through three sources. He hired people to watch her house and they reported her comings and goings. His family was also briefed by ISI officials who said they were following her movements, he said. (Khan named an ISI brigadier whom I later contacted; he declined to speak).
Most strikingly, Khan claimed to have seen his ex-wife with his own eyes. In April 2003, he said, the ISI asked him to identify his ex-wife as she got off a flight from Islamabad, accompanied by her son. Two years later he spotted her again in a Karachi traffic jam. But he never went public with the information. “I wanted to protect her, for the sake of my children,” he said.
Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi, a geologist and uncle of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, at his home in Islamabad, Pakistan Photograph: Declan Walsh
**Khan’s version of events has enraged his ex-wife’s family. Fowzia has launched a 500m rupees (£360,000) defamation law suit, while regularly attacking him in the press as a wifebeater set on “destroying” her family. “Marrying him was Aafia’s biggest mistake,” she told me. Khan says it is a ploy to silence him in the media and take away his children.
**
**Khan’s explanation is bolstered by the one person who claims to have met the missing neuroscientist between 2003 and 2008 – her uncle, Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi. Back in Islamabad, I went to see him.
**
A sprightly old geologist, Faruqi works from a cramped office filled with coloured rocks and dusty computers. Over tea and biscuits he described a strange encounter with his niece in January 2008, six months before she was captured in Afghanistan.
It started, he said, when a white car carrying a burka-clad woman pulled up outside his gate. Beckoning him to approach, he recognised her by her voice. “Uncle, I am Aafia,” he recalled her saying. But she refused to leave the car and insisted they move to the nearby Taj Mahal restaurant to talk. Amid whispers, her story tumbled out.
**Siddiqui told him she had been in both Pakistani and American captivity since 2003, but was vague on the details. “I was in the cells but I don’t know in which country, or which city. They kept shifting me,” she said. Now she had been set free but remained under the thumb of intelligence officials based in Lahore. They had given her a mission: to infiltrate al-Qaida in Pakistan. But, Siddiqui told her uncle, she was afraid and wanted out. She begged him to smuggle her into Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban. “That was her main point,” he recalled. “She said: ‘I will be safe with the Taliban.’”
**
That night, Siddiqui slept at a nearby guesthouse, and stayed with her uncle the next day. But she refused to remove her burka. Faruqi said he caught a glimpse of her just once, while eating, and thought her nose had been altered. “I asked her, ‘Who did plastic surgery on your face?’ She said, ‘nobody’.”
On the third day, Siddiqui vanished again.
Amid the blizzard of allegations about Siddiqui, the most crucial voice is yet to be heard – her own. The trial, due to start in January, has suffered numerous delays. The longest was due to a six-month psychiatric evaluation triggered by defence claims that Siddiqui was “going crazy” – prone to crying fits and hallucinations involving flying infants, dark angels and a dog in her cell. “She’s in total psychic pain,” said her lawyer, Dawn Cardi, claiming that she was unfit to stand trial.
But at the Texas medical centre where the tests took place, Siddiqui refused to co-operate. “I can’t hear you. I’m not listening,” she told one doctor, sitting on the floor with her fingers in her ears. Others reported that she refused to speak with Jews, that she manipulated health workers and perceived herself to “be a martyr rather than a prisoner”. Last July three of four experts determined she was malingering – faking a psychiatric illness to avoid an undesirable outcome. “She is an intelligent and at times manipulative woman who showed goal-directed and rational thinking,” reported Dr Sally Johnson.
Judge Richard Berman ruled that Siddiqui “may have some mental health issues” but was competent to stand trial.
Back in Pakistan Siddiqui has become a cause celebre. Newspapers write unquestioningly about her “torture”, parliament has passed resolutions, placard-waving demonstrators pound the streets and the government is spending $2m on a top-flight defence. High-profile supporters include the former cricketer Imran Khan and the Taliban leader Hakumullah Mehsud who has affectionately described Siddiqui as a “sister in Islam”.
The unquestioning support is a product of public fury at US-orchestrated “disappearances”, of which there have been hundreds in Pakistan, and deep scepticism about the American account of her capture. Few Pakistanis believe a frail 5ft 3in, 40kg woman could disarm an American soldier; fewer still think she would be carrying bomb booklets, chemicals and target lists.
**
But there are critics, too, albeit silent ones. A Musharraf-era minister with previous oversight of Siddiqui’s case told me it was "full of bull and lies".
**
Two weeks ago the Obama administration introduced a fresh twist, when it announced that next year (or in 2011) five Guantanamo Bay detainees will be tried in the same New York courthouse, a few blocks from the World Trade Centre. One of them is Siddiqui’s second husband, Ammar al-Baluchi, also known as Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, who stands accused of financing the 9/11 attacks.
But while the Guantanamo detainees will be tried for their part in mass terrorism, Siddiqui’s case focuses on a minor controversy – whether she fired a gun at a soldier in an Afghan police station. And so the big questions may not be probed: whether the ISI or CIA abducted Siddiqui in 2003, what she did afterwards, and where her two missing children are now. In fact the framing of the charges raises a new question: if Siddiqui was such a dangerous terrorist five years ago, why is she not being charged as one now? A senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of strict anonymity, offered a tantalising explanation.
**In the world of counter-espionage, he said, someone like Siddiqui is an invaluable asset. And so, he speculated, sometime over the last five years she may have been “flipped” – turned against militant sympathisers – by Pakistani or American intelligence. “It’s a very murky world,” he said.
**
“Maybe the Americans have no charges against her. Maybe they don’t want to compromise their sources of information. Or maybe they don’t want to put that person out in the world again. The thing is, you’ll never really know.”
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on…
Most of us believe in what the Americans say as they can never be wrong. What if everything is cooked up (conspiracy theory) by the American and Pakistani intelligence? There are many questions which have remained unanswered in this trial.
Andy Worthington: Barbaric: 86-Year Sentence for Aafia Siddiqui
To be honest, I can hardly express sufficiently my shock at the news that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist who was rendered to the U.S. to face a trial after she reportedly tried – and failed – to shoot two U.S. soldiers in Ghazni, Afghanistan in July 2008, has been sentenced to 86 years in prison.
Such a disproportionate sentence would be barbaric, even if Aafia Siddiqui had killed the soldiers she shot at, but as she missed entirely, and was herself shot twice in the abdomen, it simply doesn’t make sense.** Moreover, the sentencing overlooks claims by her lawyers that her fingerprints were not even on the gun that she allegedly fired, and, even more significantly, hints at a chilling cover-up, mentioned everywhere except at Dr. Siddiqui’s trial earlier this year. Seen this way, her sudden reappearance in Ghazni in July 2008, the shooting incident, the trial and the conviction were designed to hide the fact that, for five years and four months, from March 2003, when she and her three children were reportedly kidnapped in Karachi, she was held in secret U.S. detention – possibly in the US prison at Bagram, Afghanistan – where she was subjected to horrendous abuse.
**
The truth about Aafia Siddiqui’s story, as I have mentioned in previous articles here, here and here, is difficult to discern, but too many unanswered questions had already been brushed off before this vile sentence was delivered, which involve not only Dr. Siddiqui, but also two of her three children, Ahmed and Mariam, who only resurfaced last September, and in April this year. The whereabouts of her third child, Suleiman, who was just a baby when she first disappeared, has never been disclosed, and there are fears that he was killed when she was initially kidnapped.
As for Mariam, an article at the time of her reappearance stated that she “claim[ed] she was kept in a ‘cold, dark room’ for seven years,” allegedly in Bagram, and in late August 2008, Michael G. Garcia, the attorney general of the southern region of New York, “confirmed in a letter to Siddiqui’s sister, Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui, that her son, Ahmed, had been in the custody of the FBI since 2003 and that he was currently in the custody of the Karzai government in Afghanistan,” even though the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, had previously claimed that Washington “had no information regarding the children.” The article added that Ahmed was finally released to the custody of Siddiqui’s family in Pakistan in September 2009, and later “gave a statement to police in Lahore that he had been held in a juvenile prison in Afghanistan for years.”
Like everything in the story of Aafia Siddiqui, which remains, in many ways, the most opaque story in the whole of the “War on Terror,” it is difficult to say what is true and what is not, but these accounts, as well as eyewitness accounts from other prisoners, including the British resident and former Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, who has stated that he saw Aafia Siddiqui in Bagram, serve only to demonstrate that, not only is an 86-year sentence the most abominable miscarriage of justice, but also that it meshes perfectly with the notion that this whole sad story is an enormous cover-up.
As I asked six months ago:
**If Aafia Siddiqui was indeed held in secret US custody for over five years, was the story of the attempted shooting of the U.S. soldiers in July 2008 a cynical set-up, designed to ensure that she could be transferred to the U.S. and tried, convicted and imprisoned without the true story coming to light?
**
*For someone once touted as a significant al-Qaeda operative, it is, to say the least, convenient that she has been sentenced to 86 years in prison on charges that – beyond the prosecutors’ claim that she was an al-Qaeda supporter and a danger to the U.S. – completely ignored her alleged role in al-Qaeda. The entire court case also avoided the valid presumption that, if she was indeed regarded as an al-Qaeda operative, it would not be surprising if, like many dozens of other “high-value detainees,” she suffered years of torture in U.S. custody, and then, somehow, had to be disposed of.
**
While some of these prisoners ended up in Guantánamo, and others were stealthily delivered on one-way trips to prisons in their home countries, Aafia Siddiqui ended up in New York, rendered – there is no other word – from Afghanistan. And although she urged her supporters in court to remain calm yesterday, telling them, “Don’t get angry. Forgive Judge Berman,” it may be that, in delivering what he referred to as an “appropriate” sentence of “significant incarceration,” Judge Richard Berman may have done just what the CIA wanted.
*
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (Pluto Press), and the co-director, with Polly Nash, of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.” He maintains a blog here, where a version of this article was first published.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
Does any one know if Aafia was tried for terrorism (read Alqaeda) or only the case related to carry out terrorist attack on Newyork and attacking American soldiers? Because the previous article that I have posted claims that she was not tried on the Alqaeda charges. if she has not been tried for AQ this could well be a cover up.
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
The allegations on afia are still unconfirmed even according to the WMD fame sources. We should not have sold our daughter in any case and now that she is in kuffar prisions we should atleast make dua that she is freed and given justice according to pakistani law.
can you care to explain how the allegations are unconfirmed? If you think with logic your Islamists & also Pakistan political parties specially PTI & MQM use the Afia issue for political mileage.
again when you use word "kuffar" i just laugh at your brain, coz your sister afia was studying/living/enjoying Kuffar country, her children were born in kuffar hospitals with the help of kuffar doctors. so don't try to aaaho.. up !
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
Let me ask some simple questions
If you agree then please pray for her, try to raise your voice for her. Once she gets these basic rights and both parties are at arm length only then we will see whose narrative is correct and whose not.
1) the justice has been done, US judicial system is far fair & better then gay talibans judiciary.
2) she had good medical care, that's why she is alive. Logic
3) I would suggest giving her to firing squad instead of 80 years. But if you think from my perspective she is a living example for all the terrorists to come.
I agree with you, and hopefully she will burn in hell and on earth too. Inshallah !
Re: When we sold a daughter-09th Year on...
1) the justice has been done, US judicial system is far fair & better then gay talibans judiciary.
Aside from the argument if justice was served or not, just wanted to point out the irony in the choice of words here.
There is more chance that a Judge sitting in a US court is a homosexual than the accused in the quoted sentence because it is considered completely normal in US legal system to have homosexual behavioral tendencies whereas this is not true in the other case.
Cheers!