Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

Transcription

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

Dr. Aafia
Siddiqui

Compiled by The Peace Thru Justice Foundation
and Families United for Justice in America
Foreword by
Dr. Tarek Mehanna
© Copyright 1433 AH / 2012 AC
2012—All Rights Reserved for all original material
contained in this publication.
Contact Information:
The Peace Thru Justice Foundation
11006 Veirs Mill Road
STE L-15, PMB 298
Silver Spring, MD. 20902
Tel: (301) 220-0133 or (202) 246-9608
E-mail: [email protected]
website: www.peacethrujustice.org
Official Website: www.FreeAafia.org
D e d i c at i o n
For the Oppressed
BEFORE
AFTER
Table of Conte nts
Introduction..................................................................................7
Foreword: The Aafia Siddiqui I Saw
by Dr. Tarek Mehanna....................................................................17
Family & Friends
.
.
.
.
Who was Dr. Aafia Siddiqui? An Eyewitness Account
by Andy Purcell..........................................................................26
My Memories of Aafia in Boston
by Bashir Hanif..........................................................................32
Aafia Siddiqui – Memories of MIT to Carswell Prison
by Hena Zuberi..........................................................................36
A Tale of Two Prisoners
by Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui...............................................................42
Other Voices
.
.
.
-
The Sentencing of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
by Mauri’ Saalakhan..................................................................48
WikiLeaks Renews Dr. Afia Siddiqui Mystery
by John Floyd and Billy Sinclair...............................................60
The WikiLeaks on Aafia Siddiqui
The Aafia Siddiqui Case: A New Turn as Lawyers Release
Explosive, Secretly Recorded Tape
. by Victoria Brittain....................................................................68
.
.
Injustice in the Age of Obama
by Cindy Sheehan.......................................................................85
A Tale of Three Accused Women: And Justice American Style
The Challenges Ahead
.
.
Condemned by Their Silence
by Yvonne Ridley........................................................................96
Why Have Muslims Who Knew Aafia Been So Silent?..........101
A Message of Gratitude from the Family of
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.....................................................................106
Epilogue: An Open Letter to the U.S. Government.....................108
I ntroduction 7
Introduction
O
n December 31, 2011, a sizeable group of concerned citizens of varying faiths and ideological persuasions assembled on a busy thoroughfare in the little town of Westworth,
Texas, to demonstrate their concern for a female prisoner being held
on the Carswell Airbase. The activists were told the town of Westworth (part of greater Fort Worth) has the closest entry point into the
part of the base where the penal hospital known as FMC Carswell
is located.
This was the second demonstration held at this location for a
female prisoner known as Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. A demonstration was
held on April 9th at the same location, with the only difference being
that the December 31st mobilization included a march as well as a
protest rally. Who is this woman that total strangers would take time
out of a beautiful New Year’s Eve afternoon to demonstrate for, in
of all places, deep in the heart of Texas?
A synopsis of her story
Aafia Siddiqui was born in Pakistan in 1972. She spent her early
years in Zambia (Africa), where her mother worked with a non-profit women’s organization as a social worker and her late father was
a practicing physician. She came to the United States from Pakistan
at 18, and lived with her older brother (Muhammad) and his family while attending the University of Houston her freshman year.
After an impressive academic start in Texas, Aafia matriculated to
Boston’s MIT on a full scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree
in biology; she would later earn her doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from Brandeis University.
8 O ther V oices
At Brandeis, Aafia’s doctoral thesis was on “Learning through
Imitation.” Her research was centered on how to improve learning
techniques for children (especially those with learning disabilities).
She later married a Pakistani physician by the name of Mohammad
Amjad Khan, the couple had three children together (two sons and
a daughter) before separating under acrimonious circumstances.
Shortly after moving the family to Pakistan in 2002, Khan divorced
Aafia while she was pregnant with the couple’s third child. He remarried within weeks of the divorce, and in March 2003, Aafia and
her three young children (two of whom are American-born citizens)
were kidnapped from the streets of Pakistan and disappeared without a trace.
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui – a citizen of Pakistan and devoted mother of
three children - is now 39 years old, a political prisoner (and prisoner of war), being held under unconstitutional conditions in the
United States of America.
Circumstances surrounding the case
It is our belief that a series of innocent occurrences in the lives of
Amjad Khan and Aafia Siddiqui (while they were living in Boston,
post 9/11) brought the couple to the attention of U.S. authorities. We
believe that Aafia’s academic prowess, her charitable work, and her
well known commitment to Islam heightened the suspicion around
her at a time when active Muslims throughout the country were
coming under suspicion - simply for being active and committed
Muslims.
In March 2003, a recently divorced Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and her
three young children - Ahmad (boy), six years old and an American
citizen; Maryam (girl), four years old and also an American citizen; and Suleman (boy), a six month old Pakistani citizen - were
kidnapped by unknown authorities in Karachi, Pakistan, when the
I ntroduction 9
taxi they were traveling in was stopped and all four passengers were
forcibly removed.
On March 31, 2003 it was reported by the Pakistani media
that Aafia had been arrested and turned over to representatives of the
United States. In early April, this was confirmed by NBC Nightly
News (in addition to other media outlets). Around the same time
the mother of Aafia received a message from purported “agencies”
which essentially stated that if the family ever wanted to see Aafia and her children alive again, they should be quiet about their
disappearance.
By 2008, many believed that Aafia and her three children were
most likely dead; and then in July of 2008 (the same month that
Aafia Siddiqui mysteriously reappeared on the streets of Ghazni,
Afghanistan, in a weakened and disheveled state, in the company of
a young boy) two events occurred:
1. British human-rights journalist Yvonne Ridley, and
former Bagram detainee and British citizen Moazem
Begg, publicly spoke out about a woman who was
being held at the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan, a woman who the male prisoners would often
hear screaming. They dubbed this woman the “Grey
Lady of Bagram.”
2. A petition for habeas corpus was filed with the Pakistan High Court in Islamabad, requesting that the
court order the Pakistani government to free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, or to even admit that they (or others)
were detaining her.
The competing accounts of July 2008
The official account is that Aafia and her son were taken into Afghan
custody in July 2008, and while in custody awaiting re-interroga-
10 O ther V oices
tion, she is accused of charging forth from behind a curtain like a
female Rambo, picking up a M-4 rifle off the floor, taking the safety
off and firing it while screaming anti-American expletives at her intended targets. Miraculously she missed everyone in the room, and
she was shot in retaliation. That’s the official story. Aafia’s version
is far more plausible.
Aafia testified during the trial (in violation of the court order that
banned any exploration of those missing five years!) that upon hearing the voices of Americans enter the room, she began to feel panic,
and her mind fixated on one thing – she did not want to be sent back
to the secret prison. As the Afghans and Americans argued over who
would retain custody of the prisoners, Aafia said she peered through
the curtain looking for an escape route, and a soldier who was sitting
directly across the small room saw her and panicked. He jumped up
and shouted, “The prisoners free!” (or something to that effect), then
pulled out his sidearm and fired, striking Aafia two or three times in
the stomach area.
Aafia was transported for emergency treatment to a field hospital, and, after being stabilized, brought back to the United States (in
violation of international law) where she has been ever since. Aafia
was the only person shot on that fateful day. The only shell casings
found on the floor during the investigation that ensued were the shell
casings from the automatic weapon that was used to shoot her. Aafia would miraculously survive the deadly confrontation and deny
the charges leveled against her; a denial that would receive support
from an unlikely source. The Afghan commander of the police compound would later state, “The prisoner” (referring to Aafia Siddiqui)
“never fired a weapon.”
Despite the earlier allegations against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, and the
way that her “capture” and subsequent trial played out in the media,
NO TERRORISM CHARGES were leveled against her in the fed-
I ntroduction 11
eral indictment. Not one! Mere facts, however, were not allowed to
get in the way of a vigorous and bigoted prosecution. Among other
things, there were constant innuendos of terrorism by the prosecution throughout the trial, despite the fact that Aafia was not even
charged with material support for terrorism.
The prosecution of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was littered with many
troubling inconsistencies and defects. Pre-trial rulings, and rulings throughout the trial by the judge in the case (Richard Berman)
strongly favored the prosecution and prejudiced the case against the
defense. This ranged from allowing hearsay evidence into the proceedings, to giving the jury instructions that favored the prosecution.
The most damning of Berman’s rulings, however, was the order that
banned any examination of the missing five years (2003-2008) during the trial!
It should also be noted that Aafia was not represented by lawyers
of her own choosing; and further, the high-priced team of lawyers
that she had, while experienced and capable, put on a very, very
disappointing and passionless defense! One could argue that Aafia
received nothing more than an adequate defense…which at the end
of the day ended up being woefully inadequate!
The convergence of Judge Richard Berman’s prejudiced framing of the case, the terrorism innuendo that came from the prosecutors, the unrelentingly biased media coverage that was a daily occurrence, the lackluster performance of Aafia’s lawyers, and the jury’s
shameful embrace of an official narrative that defied logic – resulted
in Dr Aafia Siddiqui being convicted on all counts in the indictment.
On September 23, 2010, Aafia was sentenced to 86 years in prison
by a federal judge who overruled the jury’s determination that there
was no premeditation. Judge Berman also added judicial enhancements that made no legal sense!
12 O ther V oices
What the Family and Supporters of Aafia believe
We believe Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is an innocent person who was abducted for money, or based on false allegations (or false assumptions) derived from one or more unknown sources; and that all
of the evidence required for establishing the fact that she and her
children were the targets of a rendition operation – i.e., kidnapped
and then secretly and illegally imprisoned overseas - would require the full cooperation of the U.S. and Pakistani governments,
or certain intelligence agencies…a cooperation that seems virtually
impossible.
We believe that any government-held documents of an incriminating nature against Aafia are either false documents, or documents
produced under torture and/or the threat of harm to Aafia’s children.
Further, that on the day of her re-arrest in Ghazni, the Afghan police
were looking for Aafia and her oldest son (Ahmad, who had just
been briefly reunited with his mother) based on a description given
by an anonymous tipster shortly after her suspicious release from
Bagram.
We believe that Aafia, who spoke no local language in Ghazni,
was dressed conspicuously so that she (and her son) could be easily
identified and shot on sight as falsely accused, or suspected, “suicide
bombers.”
We believe that had Aafia and Ahmad been shot on sight, on
the suspicion of being suicide bombers, this would have led to a
convenient closure of the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, at a time when
a petition for habeas corpus was pending in the High Court of Pakistan in Islamabad. This court had been asked to order then-President
Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani government (which would include anyone working with them) to release her or to reveal her
whereabouts.
I ntroduction 13
We believe that the forensic and scientific evidence presented
during the trial in New York proved that Aafia Siddiqui could not
have committed the crimes for which she was charged (“attempting to murder U.S. personnel” in Afghanistan in July 2008); and
that the jury disregarded the material evidence – and the perjured
testimony of the government’s star witnesses - and chose to agree
with the prosecution’s narrative, due to the government’s successful
(media-assisted) manipulation of fear and prejudice.
What the detractors of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui want us to believe
Aafia’s detractors want us to believe that this respectable Pakistani
woman is a female terrorist mastermind that was voluntarily hiding
undercover (with three young children) and acting as a field operative for al-Qaeda, while leaving her distressed family to believe for
five years that she and her three children were dead.
We are asked to believe that Aafia took on this persona right
after her father died - and following the disintegration of her marriage - and that she callously decided to leave her newly widowed
mother alone in Pakistan while she sallied about for a jihadist adventure. While an establishment journalist by the name of Deborah
Scroggins has just published a book, which, according to early reviews, appears to echo this very unfortunate narrative, those who
know Aafia Siddiqui are absolutely convinced that this scenario is
not plausible at all!
And as the French philosopher Voltaire reportedly said: “Those
who can make us believe absurdities can also cause us to commit
atrocities.”
Aafia’s Children
• Aafia’s oldest son, Ahmed, who is a U.S. citizen by
birth, was found in Ghazni, Afghanistan after think-
14 O ther V oices
ing he was an orphan, and in late 2008 was reunited
with Aafia’s family (mother and sister) in Karachi,
Pakistan.
• Aafia’s daughter, Maryum, also a US citizen by birth,
was mysteriously “dropped off” in April 2010 (with
identification around her neck) near her aunt’s house
in Karachi after being missing for seven years. She
was traumatized and spoke only American accented
English.
• Aafia’s youngest child, Suleman, a boy who would
now be almost nine years old, remains missing; and
is feared dead.
What Aafia’s Family and Supporters Want?
• Her Freedom and repatriation back to her home in
Pakistan.
• An open and independent investigation into what
happened to Aafia and her children; and accountability for all of the other disappeared persons from the
so-called “war on terrorism.”
• That important lessons be learned from this tragic
case, so that such heartbreaking atrocities can come
to an end.
We ask people to look into this case for themselves, and to do
so with an open mind. There is a lot of information out there on Dr.
Aafia Siddiqui in the public square. Some of the stories demonize
Aafia, while others raise her to sainthood. Aafia is neither demon nor
saint; she is simply an ordinary mother, daughter, sister, and committed Muslimah, trapped in an extraordinary man-made nightmare.
Make du’a (say a prayer) for her, and do what you can to aid this
humble effort to end Aafia’s nightmare.
I ntroduction 15
This little book, comprised of many voices, should provide you
with some valuable ammunition toward that end, insha’Allah (God
willing). Now the rest is up to you . . . let your conscience be your
guide.
Salaams (Peace),
El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan
Director of Operations
BEFORE
AFTER
F oreword 17
FOREWOR D
The Aafia Siddiqui I Saw
By Dr. Tarek Mehanna
D
uring the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him), those
who entered Islam were of two types: those who remained
in their lands with the general populace practicing the basic tenets of the religion, and those who took it upon themselves to
migrate and join the Prophet in his expeditions. There are ahadith
that show that the Prophet treated these two groups differently from
each other due to their difference in status. For example, Muslim
and at-Tirmidhi report that when appointing a leader to a battalion,
he would instruct him on how to deal with those of the enemy who
became Muslims, saying: “…invite them to migrate from their
lands to the land of the Muhajirin, and inform them that if they
do so, they will have all the privileges and obligations of the Muhajirin. If they refuse to migrate, tell them that they will have the
status of the Bedouins, and will be subjected to the commands of
Allah like the rest of the believers…” This distinction was simply
of one group deciding to take upon its shoulders certain responsibilities in contrast to the other whose inactivity limited them to a very
individualistic, localized, benign practice of Islam. One can in essence say that the Prophet divided the practice of the Muslims at the
time into two types: the religion of the Migrants (Din al-Muhajirin,
whose adherents took upon their shoulders the responsibilities of
aiding and giving victory to Islam), and the religion of the Bedouins
(Din al-A’rab, whose adherents did not go beyond the basics).
Although the depiction is of a situation that existed over a thousand years ago, it is an eternal pattern that Muslims will be distrib-
18 O ther V oices
uted amongst these levels in every era and in every place. So, one
can notice this distinction even amongst the practicing Muslims of
the East and West. The Din al-A’rab of the past can be compared to
the Islam that is limited to the five pillars, eating zabihah, and keeping the local mosque clean. Considering how difficult it is in the
West to come across even these Muslims, imagine what joy comes
to the eye and heart to see those who go a step further and reach the
level of adhering to Din al-Muhajirin – those whose concern spans
the entire Ummah, driving them to get up and become active workers for Islam, to dedicate their every minute to the service of Allah
however they can, no matter what other responsibilities clutter their
busy lives; to have their hearts beat with the rest of the Muslims –
all this with their heads raised high and paying no regard to those
around them who eat and live like cattle, as it was said:
Such are the free in a world of the enslaved…
Recently, the entire world has been speaking about one such person – a short, thin college student, wife, and mother of three small
children. Her name is Aafia Siddiqui.
I want you to be drawn to the story of this woman and also understand why I was drawn to it. I want you to come to know of the
concern and dedication that this woman had for Islam as described
by those who knew her – a dedication that was manifested by way
of actions that were very simple and easy, yet seldom carried out by
those who are able.
Those who knew Aafia recall that she was a very small, quiet,
polite, and shy woman who was barely noticeable in a gathering.
However, they add that when necessary, she would say what needed
to be said. She was once giving a speech at a fundraiser for Bosnian
orphans at a local mosque in which she began lambasting the men
F oreword 19
in the audience for not stepping up to do what she was doing. She
would plead: “Where are the men? Why do I have to be the one
standing up here and doing this work?” And she was right, as she
was a mother, a wife, and a student in a community full of brothers
with nothing to show when it came to Islamic work.
When she was a student at MIT, she began organizing drives to
deliver copies of the Qur’an and other Islamic literature to the Muslims in the local prisons. She would have them delivered in boxes
to a local mosque, and she would then show up at the mosque and
carry the heavy boxes by herself all the way down the three flights
of very steep stairs. Subhan Allah, look at the Qadar of Allah: this
woman who would spend so much time and effort to help Muslim
prisoners is now herself a prisoner (I ask Allah to free her)!
Her dedication to Islam was also very evident on campus. A 2004
article from Boston Magazine mentions that… “she wrote three
guides for members who wanted to teach others about Islam. On
the group’s website, Siddiqui explained how to run a dawah table,
and informational booth used at school’s events to educate people
about, and persuade them to convert, to Islam.” The article continues to mention that in the guides she wrote: “Imagine our humble
but sincere dawah effort turning into a major dawah movement in
this country! Just imagine it! And us, reaping the reward of everyone who accepts Islam through this movement, through years to
come. Think and plan big. May ALLAH give strength and sincerity
to us so that our humble effort continue, and expands until America
becomes a Muslim land.”
Allahu Akbar…look at this himmah (concern)…look at these
lofty aspirations and goals! As men, we should be ashamed to have
to learn such lessons from a sister.
20 O ther V oices
She would drive out of her way every week to teach the local
Muslim children on Sundays. I was told by a sister that she would
also drive out of her way every week to visit a small group of reverts
to teach them the basics of Islam. One of the sisters who attended
her circles described Aafia as “not going out of her way to be noticed
by anybody, or to be anyone’s friend. She just came out here to teach
us about Allah, and English wasn’t even her first language!”
Another sister who would attend her circles describes: “She
shared with us that we should never make excuses for who we are.
She said: “Americans have no respect for people who are weak.
Americans will respect us if we stand up and we are strong.””
Allahu Akbar…O Allah, free this woman!
But Aafia’s biggest passion was helping the oppressed Muslims
around the globe. When war in Bosnia broke out, she did not sit back
and watch with one knee over the other. Rather, she immediately
sought out whatever means were within her grasp to make a difference. She didn’t sit in a dreamy bubble thinking all day about how
she wished that she could go over to Bosnia and help with relief efforts. She got up and did what she could: she would speak to people
to raise awareness, she would ask for donations, she would send emails, she would give slideshow presentations – the point I’m trying
to make here is that Aafia showed that there is always something we
can do to help our brothers and sisters, the least of which is a spoken
word to raise awareness to those who are unaware. Sitting back and
doing nothing is never an option. She once gave a speech at a local
mosque to raise funds for Bosnian orphans, and when the audience
was just sitting there watching her, she asked: “How many people in
this room own more than one pair of boots?” When half the room
raised their hands, she said: “So, donate them to these Bosnians who
are about to face a brutal winter!” She was so effective in her plea
that even the imam took off his boots and donated them!
F oreword 21
There is much more to say about how passionate this sister was
for Islam. However, the above gives you an idea of what she was
like, and should hopefully serve as an inspiration for brothers before
sisters to become active in serving Islam through whatever means
are available. Remember that she was doing all of this while being
a mother and a PhD student, and most of us do much less despite
having much more free time.
So, having this image of Aafia in my mind, I was taken aback at
what I saw when she was brought into court for what should have
been her bail hearing. The door on the front left side of the courtroom
was slowly opened to reveal a frail, limp, exhausted woman who
could barely hold her own head up straight in a pale blue wheelchair.
She was dressed in a Guantanamo-style orange prison uniform, and
her frail head was wrapped in a white hijab that was pulled down to
cover her bone-thin arms (the prison uniform is shortsleeved). Her
lawyers quickly sat around her, and the hearing began.
The head prosecutor, assistant US attorney Christopher LaVigne, walked in with a group of three or four FBI agents, one of
whom was a female who looked Pakistani. The defense began by
announcing that the bail hearing was to be postponed because of
Aafia’s medical condition. Essentially, Aafia’s lawyers reasoned that
there was no point of her being out on bail if she was near death. So,
they demanded that she be allowed a doctor’s visit before anything
else. LaVigne got up and objected, saying that Aafia was a risk to
the security of the United States. The judge didn’t seem to buy that,
and the prosecutor continued arguing that “this is a woman who attempted to blast her way out of captivity.” As soon as this was said,
I looked over and noticed Aafia shaking her head in desperation and
sadness, as if she felt that the whole world was against her. By the
way, Aafia was so small and weak that I could barely see her from
behind the wheelchair. All I could see was her head slumped over to
the left and wrapped in the hijab, and her right arm sticking out.
22 O ther V oices
I got a better understanding of why she was so sad and desperate
when her lawyer began listing details of her condition:
* She now has brain damage from her time in US
custody
* One of her kidneys was removed while in US custody
* She is unable to digest her food since part of her
intestines was removed during surgery while in
US custody
* She has layers and layers of sewed up skin from
the surgery for the gunshot wound
* She has a large surgical scar from her chest area
all the way down to her torso
With all of this, she had not been visited by a single doctor the
entire time of her incarceration in the US despite being in constant
incredible abdominal pain following her sloppy surgery in Afghanistan – pain for which she was being given nothing more than Ibuprofen! Ibuprofen is purchased over the counter to treat headaches!
With all of this, the prosecutor had the audacity and shamelessness to try to prevent her from being seen by a doctor due to her
being a “security risk.” When he was pressed by the judge as to
why Aafia was sitting all this time in a NYC prison without basic
medical care, the government attorney stuttered, said that it was “a
complicated situation,” and capped it with the expected cheap shot
that “it was her decision as she refused to by seen by a male doctor.”
As soon as the prosecutor said that last bit, I saw Aafia’s thin arm
shoot up and shake back and forth to the judge (as if to say ‘No! He’s
lying!’). I felt so sorry for her, as she was obviously quite frustrated
at the lies being spilled out before her very eyes. Her lawyer then put
her hand on her arm and began stroking it to comfort her and calm
her down.
F oreword 23
When the hearing was over, one scholarly statement stuck in
my mind, and it is where Ibn al-Qayyim said that a person rises in
his closeness to Allah until: “…there remains only one obstacle to
which the enemy calls him, and this is an obstacle that he must face.
If anyone were to be saved from this obstacle, it would have been
the Messengers and Prophets of Allah, and the noblest of His Creation. This is the obstacle of Satan unleashing his troops upon the
believer with various types of harm: by way of the hand, the tongue,
and the heart. This occurs in accordance with the degree of goodness that exists within the believer. So, the higher he is in degree,
the more the enemy unleashes his troops and helps them against
him, and overwhelms him with his followers and allies in various
ways. There is no way around this obstacle, because the firmer he is
in calling to Allah and fulfilling His commands, the more the enemy
becomes intent upon deceiving him with foolish people. So, he has
essentially put on his body armor to confront this obstacle, and has
taken it upon himself to confront the enemy for Allah’s Sake and in
His Name, and his worship in so doing is the worship of the best of
worshippers.”
And this was absolutely clear that day when looking at the scene
in the court. Despite Aafia’s apparent physical weakness and frailty,
there was a certain ‘izzah (honor) and strength that I felt emanating
from her the entire time. Everything from the way she forcefully
shook her hand at the judge when the prosecutor would lie, to how
she was keen to wear her hijab on top of her prison garments despite
horrible circumstances that would make hijab the last thing on most
people’s minds, to the number of FBI agents, US Marshals, reporters, officials, etc. who were all stuffed in this small room to observe
this frail, weak, short, quiet, female “security risk” – everything
pointed to the conclusion that the only thing all of these people were
afraid of was the strength of this sister’s iman.
24 O ther V oices
This is the situation of our dear sister, a Muslim woman in
captivity…
What can I say…?
I will not close by mentioning the obligation of helping to free
Muslim prisoners. I will not mention how al-Mu’tasim razed an entire city to the ground to rescue a single Muslim woman. I will not
go back to the days of Salah ad-Din or ‘Umar bin ‘Abd al-’Aziz,
who rescued Muslim prisoners in the tens of thousands. I cannot be
greedy enough to mention these things at this point because what is
even sadder than what is happening to Aafia Siddiqui is how few the
Muslims were who even bothered to show up to her hearing in a city
of around half a million Muslims (not counting the surrounding areas), and that not a single Muslim organization in the United States
has taken up the sister’s cause or even spoken a word in her defense,
and as Ibn al-Qayyim said: “If ghayrah (protective jealousy) leaves
a person’s heart, his faith will follow it.”
Unfortunately, in a time where most of us are following Din alA’rab, it seems that the best person to teach us a lesson in how to
help Aafia Siddiqui would have been Aafia herself.
---------------------This commentary was written by Dr. Tarek Mehanna in 2008,
shortly after Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was brought (barely alive) to the
United States from Afghanistan, where she was secretly held as
a prisoner of war. Dr. Mehanna is now a political prisoner (and
prisoner of war) himself, following a failed attempt by the FBI to
recruit him for their nefarious undercover, mischief-making agenda
in the Muslim-American community. For more information go to:
www.FreeTarek.com
Fam i ly & fri e n d s
26 O ther V oices
Who was Dr. Aafia? An eyewitness account
By Andrew Purcell T
his document began life in October 2008 as an e-mail to the
author’s family and friends to explain why he cared so much
about what happened to this “terribly dangerous woman.”
This story has been getting uneven play in the news in this country. Some of you may not even recognize her name.
The FBI began looking for Aafia Siddiqui in March 2003 for
reasons never explained and the internet is full of guesses, ranging
from the almost believable through outlandishly lurid.
These internet stories became sensational fantasy. “Lady alQaeda Leader Totes Three Small Children, Ex-Husband, New Husband, Boyfriend Around World While Directing Bin-Laden’s Biological Weapons and Internet Programs, Smuggling Diamonds from
Africa, Laundering Money, Planning Attacks On Gasoline Stations
In Maryland…”
These were all real headlines in 2003. Even a James Bond villain would have trouble matching them. There is even one web site
claiming that she can be found in the Bible, mentioned by name, as
a sign of the coming Rapture, by using information published in the
popular book “The Bible Code.”
You get the idea. The first story I came across read “FBI Looking for Female al-Qaeda Leader.” That was so odd. Don’t those bozos realize that al-Qaeda has no use for female leaders? They barely
consider women to be human. [According to popular group think]
F amily & F riends 27
So I called her family and asked what was going on. Yes, you
read that right. I have known Aafia, her brother, her sister, and their
mother for decades.
They told me that Aafia and her three children, Ahmad, 6, Maryam, 4, and Sulayman, six months, had disappeared one weekend in
March, 2003 and that no one had heard from them since. Shortly
after Aafia and her children disappeared the Pakistani government
announced that she had been picked up and turned over to the US
government. The US government denied having her in its custody,
and the Pakistani government then denied arresting her.
Anonymous sources in Pakistan initially told her family to keep
quiet about the disappearance and she and the children would be released soon. In the following months the message to the family was
changed to keep quiet and you won’t be harmed.
As the months went by, her family assumed that she and the
children were dead.
Aafia faded into limbo for more than a year, until summer 2004
when the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI announced
that she was one of seven terrorists who were planning to disrupt the
American presidential elections.
After that, Aafia and her children might as well have drifted off
the edge of the world. Various human rights organizations added
them to their list of people whose disappearances seemed to be
linked to governmental actions in the Global War on Terror.
About two years ago a man who had been held at the US facility
at Bagram in Afghanistan was released, and he told a story about the
only woman held there. Half mad and crying all the time; subjected
28 O ther V oices
to “harsh interrogation techniques” and “physical indignities”. He
identified her as Aafia Siddiqui.
She has also been described as “Prisoner 650, “The Ghost of
Bagram”, and “The Grey Lady.”
In early July 2008, a British journalist and a south Asian human
rights group had collected enough evidence to pinpoint her location
down to the cell number at Bagram, and they began legal proceedings to force the authorities to produce Aafia and her children. The
American phrase is “habeas corpus.”
A few days later…
The original Afghani story:
On July 17, 2008, Afghani police, acting on an anonymous tip that a
foreign woman was planning terrorist activities, arrested Aafia Siddiqui outside the governor’s compound in Ghazni, and discovered
in her purse bottles of liquids, bomb making instructions, and a map
of New York City landmarks.
During the arrest, Aafia fled towards a group of approaching
American soldiers, and was shot by one of them who feared she was
a suicide bomber. Afterwards, the Afghani policemen allowed the
Americans to take her into custody.
The official American story:
On July 17, 2008, Afghani police, acting on an anonymous tip that a
foreign woman was planning terrorist activities, arrested Aafia Siddiqui outside the governor’s compound in Ghazni, and discovered
in her purse bottles of liquids, bomb making instructions, and a map
of New York City landmarks.
The next day a group of American soldiers and FBI agents went
to the police station where Aafia was being held and demanded
that she be turned over to them. During this discussion, one of the
American soldiers put his M4 rifle on the floor in front of a curtain,
unaware that Aafia was behind it.
Aafia came out from behind the curtain, picked up the rifle,
switched the safety to the “Fire” position, and fired twice before
being overpowered by an Afghani translator and shot twice by an
American soldier with his pistol. She continued to struggle and
shout obscenities until she passed out.
Aafia’s story:
Aafia hasn’t really told much of her story. She has been allowed
only limited contact with her lawyers and some brief visits with
her brother, during which discussion of the last five years was
forbidden.
So why am I telling you this odd story?
I have known Aafia, her brother, her sister, and their mother for
decades. Over the years these people have become as close to me as
anyone who shares my DNA. This is not a jihadi family. If I were to
use any adjectives for them, “middle class Victorian” would work.
Think of the family in “Mary Poppins” and throw in a few head
scarves (and yes, for all of you sticklers for accuracy, I do know that
the Banks family was technically Edwardian).
During the year and a half that Aafia lived in Houston I saw her
about once a week at her brother’s house. Her interests were pretty
much limited to her schoolwork and religion, and since my ability
to to participate in an intelligent conversation on science is limited
we talked about religion.
30 O ther V oices
The living and vibrant Islam she talked about, the Islam of mercy and redemption, the Islam of forgiveness and love, sounded very
much like the Catholicism that my mother talks about. In fact, once
you got past the accent and the different nouns, you had to wonder
if they were talking about different religions.
She went on to get a degree in science from MIT and a PhD in
Cognitive Neurology from Brandeis University. Got married, had
kids, raised money for Bosnian war orphans, brought Korans to
local jails, and was active in her local religious community . For
those of you who don’t know the difference, I will use the Christian
term you will be familiar with. This makes her a missionary not a
terrorist.
Okay, people do change. It is possible that she has changed, but
I will believe in a change that dramatic as soon as my mother joins
al-Qaeda, and Mom is a nice Catholic lady.
It is also possible that she was lying to me the whole time I have
known her, but anyone who has spent more than five minutes talking
to her will agree that guile is not her forte.
I know Aafia and the rest of her family well enough to know that
if she were hiding, whether in the mountains with Osama bin-Laden,
or anywhere else, she would have contacted her mother to let her
know she was alive, and if her mother knew she was alive, I would
have known she was alive.
I am not asking any of you to pick sides. I am just asking you to be
aware that you are hearing only the government’s side of the story.
Consider the possibility that the official story is not true. Consider the possibility that there are some very bad actors in our government who have wronged this woman and her children quite badly.
Wait a minute. I am asking you to pick sides. Aafia and her children were taken into custody in March 2003 and turned over to a
series of intelligence agencies. There is at least one witness who can
place her in Bagram in 2006.
In the face of legal activity to force her release, she was put
out on the streets of Ghazni, Afghanistan wearing traditional Pakistani clothing and carrying incriminating materials. Being unable
to speak any of the local languages, she was an obvious target for
Afghani policemen who had been given an anonymous tip that a
foreign woman was acting suspiciously.
The initial Afghani account has the ring of part of the truth. The
events described in both the initial US complaint and the indictment
describes an event that did not happen. The fancy term is perjury. It
can’t be proven yet and it may not be possible to prove. Aafia does
not have the resources to match the US government.
I am neither judge nor jury. I am a witness.
The writer, a longtime friend of the Siddiqui family, resides in Houston, Texas.
Source: Posted by MuslimMatters
32 O ther V oices
My Memories of Aafia in Boston
By Bashir Hanif
I
remember the first time that I met her. It was at a mosque in one
of Boston’s most affluent suburbs. The year was 1993. Muslims
all over the US, just like Muslims throughout the world, had
been shocked by the images of the horrors that were being perpetrated against their co-religionists in Bosnia. A tiny religious minority with virtually no ability to influence policy makers or the media,
having seen all their pleas to save the Muslims of Bosnia fall on deaf
ears, they had decided to focus their efforts on providing humanitarian relief to the suffering. Fundraisers were held in every city, town
or village that had even a handful of Muslims. Sometimes these
fundraisers were elaborate affairs with hundreds of people in the
audience listening to the passionate appeals for generous assistance
made by community leaders and representatives of humanitarian relief organizations. Often they would be small, impromptu events
where an individual or a small group of activists would seize the
opportunity provided by a gathering to draw the attention of those
gathered to the suffering of Bosnian Muslims, and solicit help on
behalf of some charitable organization. On that Sunday morning, it
seemed like she had decided to turn a routine Sunday school gathering at the mosque into a fundraising opportunity.
What struck me most, and that I still remember, is not just the
passion with which she spoke about the victims as she reminded
everyone about their obligation to help the suffering. But instead
of relying solely on the generosity of her audience, she had something very enticing to offer them as a quid pro quo. She had brought
a large assortment of cookies, brownies, samosas (Indian/Pakistani
pastries) and other delicacies that she had prepared. Now there is
nothing unusual about having a bake sale to help raise funds for
a good cause. But for a young student, living in a dormitory with
minimal kitchen privileges if any, it must have presented a host of
challenges. Later on, I discovered that this kind of striving to gain
an extra edge while pursing something noble is one of her defining
traits.
For the next couple of years we had several opportunities to
work together, as Muslims of the Greater Boston area remained very
active in the Bosnia relief effort. I remember a fundraiser in January
1994 where she did far more than give the proverbial shirt off her
back. It was organized as an auction. Weeks were spent in planning
the event and collecting items that were to be auctioned. Members
of the community donated possessions that they thought could fetch
a significant sum. Local businesses, from restaurants to hotels to skiresorts pitched in by offering gift certificates for their services. The
New England Patriots donated a football autographed by all their
players and the Boston Celtics did the same with a basketball. The
Saudi embassy in Washington, DC offered two expense paid trips
for the Hajj. We did not get much cooperation from the weather,
however. Brutally cold weather is to be expected on a January evening in Boston. That day we broke all records. It was not enough to
dampen the spirits of those who gathered for the auction, however.
As a student who neither had the material possessions to donate
for the auction nor the money with which to bid on the items being
auctioned, Aafia decided to make her contribution to the effort in
her own way. She donated a beautiful fur coat that had been given
to her by her father. Perhaps it was the symbolism of one of the least
affluent persons in the crowd giving up a cherished possession at a
time when she needed it most (it was nearly fifty degrees below zero
Fahrenheit with the wind-chill outside the hall!), that moved many
people in the audience to make such generous bids for the coat that
it became the highest ticket item auctioned that evening.
34 O ther V oices
I lost direct contact with her after she graduated from MIT and
moved to one of the more distant suburbs of Boston. Years later, as I
was passing by a shop in my neighborhood, I saw a picture of her on
a “MOST WANTED” poster. While I did not stop to see the details
more closely, it seemed like she was wanted along with a number
of other individuals on terrorism related charges. Shortly thereafter, her pictures began appearing in newspapers and on television.
Months later, someone brought to my attention a letter to the editor published in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, written by Aafia’s
uncle. According to that letter, Aafia and her three children had been
missing for several months. Her family had no information about
their whereabouts but suspected the hand of the Pakistani intelligence acting in concert with their American counterparts.
Later, especially after pictures of the treatment of Abu Ghraib
prisoners were released amid reports that there were even more outrageous ones (involving treatment of women prisoners) were being
suppressed out of concern for their inflammatory impact on Muslim
sentiment worldwide, I thought about her many times. The thought
that Pakistani authorities may be familiar with the conditions of her
incarceration or might even be the ones actually holding her, offered little reassurance. After all, was it not the Syrians, the selfproclaimed champion of Arab nationalism, and leader of Arab and
Muslim resistance to western and Zionist hegemony in the Middle
East, who had brutalized one of their own, Maher Arar, at the behest
of his Western accusers even without a shred of evidence against
him?
Finally, in 2008, she resurfaced but as a prisoner of the US accused
of attacking American soldiers during an interrogation in Afghanistan.
Such has been the chilling effect of the suspicion with which Muslims
are viewed in post 9/11 America, at least in matters related to national
security, that hardly anyone from the Boston area even acknowledged knowing her, let alone speaking out in her defense.
At the conclusion of her trial as she was sentenced to 86 years in
prison, in effect a life sentence, I could not help but to think about
another young woman who became somewhat familiar during the
Abu Ghraib scandal. Many will recall seeing her picture with a
“thumbs-up” gesture and a big smile beaming across her face as she
stood in front of the plastic enwrapped body of a dead Iraqi prisoner.
It was reported that the prisoner had just been tortured to death by
US soldiers and yet there was no trace of remorse on the woman’s
face. For her deeds, all that this woman suffered was a few weeks
in jail.
Even if we are to believe the charges brought against Aafia in
their entirety, do her crimes even remotely approach what this other woman did? And of the society where this system of injustice
goes virtually unchallenged? Or was the long sentence inevitable
because of what Aafia has been through during the years of her disappearance? Is keeping her in jail for the rest of her life the equivalent of suppressing the pictures of Muslim women prisoners being
abused?
Perhaps it is our leaders and their collaborators in the Muslim
world who have lost their freedom to do the right things, for as long
as they are engaged in this Global War on Terror.
Courtesy of www.cageprisoners.com
36 O ther V oices
Aafia Siddiqui – Memories of MIT to
Carswell Prison by Hena Zuberi
I
prayed two rakah salah before writing this – I wrote it after her
sentencing but honestly have not had the guts to publish it. I
have been scared by friends and relatives – paranoid in these
times of guilt by association – ‘Don’t write they will come after you
too.” For what? Writing a blog entry. Fear is a strange thing…Allah
(SWT); may I never be fearful of anyone but You. Ameen.
She set up the table and pressed play. Tugging at her floral scarf,
she instructed me to let the video run until the end. It was a documentary on the atrocities being committed in Bosnia. Her kind, confident voice soothed my anxiety. It was my first time manning the
booth in Slater Hall on the Wellesley campus. Next to us was a Native American lady selling silver jewelry. She handed us some extra
pamphlets and waved goodbye.
Sister Aafia, the sister I remember was the heart behind the
MSA of Greater Boston. I was a first year student at Wellesley College and my future husband a sophomore at MIT. She was the one
who would make hundreds of samosas to sell at MSA fundraisers.
A passionate activist, she struggled to find Muslim homes for the
hundreds of Bosnian orphans that were brought to the U.S. I could
relate to her then, I spent my childhood in Africa too, and like her
had come to study in the U.S. from Pakistan. She was one of the first
women I had met who was brilliant, educated, ‘religious’ and a hijabi – not many of those around in the 1990s. Pakistani women had
been ‘liberated’ in the seventies and eighties, nobody my age, in our
social circle, covered. Most women who covered then were older
grandmothers or TV anchors forced to cover under General Zia.
They make her sound so scary, ‘neuroscientist’ sounds ominous when linked with chemical warfare. Brandeis has a worldrenowned school for neuroscience where she studied behavioral
sciences, her concentration was children. Our paths diverged, we
both left Massachusetts and for years. I did not hear of her. I was
visiting Pakistan and heard about her abduction in the newspapers.
Sheikh Rasheed was the then Interior Minister in Pakistan and he
claimed (on television) to have no knowledge of her kidnapping.
An internet search of her name revealed her familiar face but on the
FBI’s most wanted list. How did she end up there? The shock of
seeing her face still gives me shudders. It is so hard for me to believe
that someone like her could have become entangled in anything so
terrible as the crimes they accuse her of.
This was 2003, I had just had my second daughter. Her child,
Suleman would have been my daughter’s age, seven. It gives me
chills thinking about what happened to that poor child, to this day no
one knows. She was missing for five long years; her family believes
that those years were spent in underground prisons. Why, why her?
Could what happened to her happen to any one of us?
Recently, she was tried in a court in Manhattan. Her sentence is
for eighty six years – how long is that? Slightly, less than a century.
We will all be dead before that date rolls around. Eighty six years for
attempted murder where no one was hurt except for her. When she
was arrested some of us foolishly hoped that at least now she was
in the hands of the American justice system and the chances of her
being released were higher. Eighty-six years!! I tried to find who
else had been meted a similar sentence but was led to an unfruitful
search of child molesters and dads who murder their kids.
38 O ther V oices
Even if she is guilty of the worst of what they accused her of
– EIGHTY SIX years? As she was not charged on any count of terrorism, her judgment was based solely on her “attempt at murder,”
but she was given a terrorism enhancement on her sentence. This
case will go down in the books of major law schools on the effect of
political influence on the judicial system. Aafia’s lawyer described
Aafia’s cell, “a small concrete block, no light, no windows… She
reminded all Americans that one day “We’re going to look back in
history and see what drove Aafia’s sentencing—fear, instilled and
practiced by its very own government. We want to punish her more
because of fear.”
To further rub salt on her wounds, the same judge who declared
her mentally capable of standing trial then insisted on sending her
to Carswell Prison, a mental institute, notorious for rape and medical neglect, where hundreds of women have lost their lives under
“questionable” circumstances.
I am reminded of Prophet Yusuf’s (AS) trial and his term served
in the prisons of ancient Egypt. I pray that as Allah’s mercy intervened for him, it too will intervene for Aafia. As he was rewarded
for his patience and constant faith, may she also be elevated in her
ranks. How can I make this comparison, if I was not a witness and
have no idea as to her state of mind? I read eyewitness accounts of
her cruel verdict – they speak volumes of her character.
She reminded the judge:
“No one here is in charge of my sentencing except for Allah. None
of what you all decide for me matters. I am content with Allah’s decision. I’m happy and you can’t change that. All thanks to Allah.”
This should shake any human to the core regardless of your religion or political inclinations. The jury did not even find her guilty
of firing a weapon.
“If you want to save humanity, get rid of child imprisonment.
Help other innocent prisoners. Don’t waste your efforts and money
on me. The money you spend on me is not used for your desired
change. Lord knows what happens to that money. I’m stuck with
these people as my decision-makers. You won’t get to alleviate my
conditions. But I’m very content as is. Don’t cry over my case. God
wants me to survive so I am here.”
“At the end of an out-of-this-world hearing, when the judge was
wrapping up his 86 year sentence, Aafia brought up the 6th verse in
the 49th chapter of the Quran, ‘O you who believe! If an evil person
comes to you with any news, verify it, lest you harm people in ignorance, and afterwards you become regretful for what you have done.’
She then asked all the people present in the court and her supporters
outside of court to have mercy on and forgive the prosecutors and
witnesses and Judge Berman. It seemed almost like Judge Berman
was mocking her when he said, ‘I wish more defendants would feel
the way that you do. Enjoy your life, Dr. Aafia.’”
She urged Muslims not to hate American soldiers. After being
held and broken, physically, mentally, psychologically, a travesty
of her former self, the torture etched in her face, she still is able to
forgive them and urges us to forgive them, too. Learning this makes
me ashamed of my own shoddy, spiritual state compared to her. She
has so much forgiveness in her heart despite being caged, and I having so many luxuries at arms length; I can kiss my children whenever I want, hug my sisters, talk to my brother, yet I am so weak. I
have a hard time forgiving someone who harms me by backbiting
or hampering my work. I wonder in our separate journeys, who is
better off?
Some words from her brother, Muhammad, whose experience
in the US has been very different from his sister, and who is still
waiting for American justice to prevail. Despite many attempts to
40 O ther V oices
visit her, he has been told that “our normal rules don’t seem to apply to your sister.“ She is isolated, although she has retained a new
lawyer but has not been allowed to contact this person. She is told
that her brother has not made the arrangements to see her. Imagine
the emotional havoc on her soul, making her think her family has
abandoned her, too.
“In the end you had a judge pronounce an 86 year sentence,
but it was Aafia who calmly offered him forgiveness and he almost
greedily accepted it and thanked her for it. For a moment one could
be excused for wondering who was lording over whom? This was
not unexpected but by quantifying the number of years, I think Berman inadvertently fueled the passions in Pakistan. A life sentence
in Pakistan generally means 10-14 years and in political cases commuted in a couple of years. People would not have been as upset
had he given her life, but 86 is an undisputed mathematical number
and is a large number. The reaction was therefore much stronger and
in an odd way, Berman provided the momentum that we all thought
would be over. Now the emotion has shifted from guilt or innocence
to the sheer brutality and total lack of compassion for Muslims. TV
channels are on a countdown to 86 years, and children put on school
plays in elite English-medium schools about Aafia’s legend – every
day people will be reminded.”
I pray that Americans join in the demands for her repatriation
back to Pakistan – send her back to her home country where her aching eyes can at least see her children through the bars.
Many people go through trials and tribulations during their lifetime. Scholars say, that to see whether the trial is a test from Allah
(SWT) or a punishment from Allah (SWT), you must do muhasabah
(ask yourself is this bringing me closer to Allah or away from Allah?) Judging solely by her remarks made in court, I can say I believe
this is a supreme test from Allah (SWT) for Sister Aafia – her iman
unwavering, her night filled with visions of the Habib (SAW).
Courtesy of www.cageprisoners.com
42 O ther V oices
A TALE OF TWO PRISONERS
by Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui
Aafia and Raymond: Who is the Real Terrorist?
O
n February 3, 2010, a New York court convicted Aafia. The
charge against her was an ATTEMPT to kill Americans. For
that she was sentenced to 86 years in prison and is being
kept in total isolation. The trial was framed by Judge Richard Berman in a way that there would be no mention of her kidnapping from
Karachi in 2003, or any mention of Aafia and her three children being held and tortured in secret prisons.
Almost exactly a year later, we are witnessing a drama in Pakistan involving an American mercenary who killed two Pakistani
youths in broad daylight, and his friends who proceeded to kill another Pakistani in an effort to help him escape to the US consulate.
Those who proclaim the Rule of Law are now using every trick
in the book to avoid that same Rule of Law. Those who champion
human rights are scrambling to figure out how to turn a cold blooded
killer into a wronged victim. Those who were too cowardly to even
write a single letter for someone they called “Daughter of the Nation” are working overtime to subvert the laws of the nation whose
people they swore to serve.
They talk of diplomatic protocol and the Vienna Convention.
Well, where was this Vienna convention when Aafia was picked up
from Pakistan and in Ghazni? Where were her consular rights (Article 36 of the Vienna convention)? She was a Pakistani. This man,
of course, is not. When did the Vienna convention become a one
way treaty? Or maybe it always was. Maybe all treaties are. So why
do we have them or need them?
Why all this hurry to bury? What does Raymond know? Or more
importantly, what was he doing? What are they afraid will come out
in an open, independent and fair investigation and trial? Are they
afraid that the same things could get exposed that they feared when
they shut Aafia away? After all, they all worked equally hard to
ensure that Aafia never sees the light of day and now they want to
free Davis immediately. Well, I have news for them: All those dirty
secrets will come out, if not today, then tomorrow. As an American
singer famously said: “The times, they are a changing.”
We are watching an attempt to turn a cold blooded killer into
a wronged victim. The Imperial Raj with its local Nawabs has become the Military Raj with its politician Nawabs. We have seen the
morphine of false hopes they use to calm us. The politics of division
they employ to keep us from uniting. That is why we rejected any
offer of a deal for our framed Aafia and their exposed Raymond.
44 O ther V oices
We are a rich, proud and generous nation that has been brought to
its knees by an addiction to foreign aid, social hypocrisy and distrust
of each other. We demand respect from others when we have none
for ourselves and our own countrymen. Respect is not demanded,
it is earned. Before we demand it from others let us earn it among
ourselves. We must value each other as human beings whose lives
are worth no less than our own.
Aafia had given us the litmus test. Mr. Davis has just renewed
the challenge and with a taunt. Now we can all see clearly where
each of us stands, where our leaders stand, where our judges stand,
where our liberals stand, where our conservatives stand. We can
clearly see what value each group places on a Pakistani life.
The value of a Pakistani is central to our existence in the world
today. We are a punching bag for everyone around the world, a convenient target for blaming all ills. Our religion, our culture, our resilience and our honor are ridiculed and we let it happen.
We let the drones kill innocent villagers in the northwest. But
these were Pathans, Taliban, or whatever. It wasn’t “us.”
We let bombs go off across Punjab. But these were the Punjabis;
the Taliban again, or just fanatics. It wasn’t “us.”
Killings go on every day in Karachi. Muhajir trouble makers or
Sindhi trouble makers or Pathans again. Not “us.”
People disappear and die all over Baluchistan. But these are Baluchi separatists. Not “us.”
Aafia and hundreds like her are sold, renditioned, and tortured.
Must be guilty of something. Anyway, not “us.”
We are part of all those people and they are part of us. Whether
we like it or not, this is our family, complete with the beautiful and
the ugly.
To those Pakistanis who hate Aafia, she is still one of you and
you are one of us. How she is treated and how we stand up for her
will define the level of respect we earn. Just look at what the Americans are doing for their Raymond. He is no boy scout but he is their
citizen and they are fighting for him.
On this anniversary of Aafia’s conviction, that wound is still deep
and fresh. God has given us momentum. I do not know His purpose
but somehow Aafia’s fate is intertwined with our motherland in a
way that justifies her being called the “Daughter of the Nation.” She
offers a unifying theme that transcends political and ethnic and religious differences. She is the issue that will not go away.
On this day Mr. Davis reminds us again of how little respect we
command and how little our leaders care and how openly they lie.
Raymond showed the same wild west mentality as the US warrant officer who shot Aafia in 2008.
Finally, the most honored moment for me this past week was the
opportunity I had to meet the families of the victims of Raymond’s
rampage. These are the people who give me faith in Pakistan. The
spirit of our nation lives in the hearts and actions of the millions of
ordinary people whose simple faith, generosity, and optimism for a
better day leaves me speechless. I met three mothers, two pregnant
wives and other family members. I know their grief and anger, but
in all of this, they offered to drop charges against Raymond and
forgo compensation if that brings Aafia home, even though there is
no comparison between her tragic experience and his crimes. Such
feeling for the sake of another person whom they do not even know
has touched our family to the core. We were advised to push for a
46 O ther V oices
deal and it was tempting, but seeing these pained mothers and their
offer, it became clear that there can be no deal on their pain.
I pray that we can achieve this sense of brotherhood with each
other. By worldly measure these people are not wealthy, but this is
the spirit that will resurrect Pakistan. Any leader who betrays these
people the way Aafia was betrayed can only look into a mirror and
feel ashamed.
The Aafia Movement is founded on principle, not politics. Its
goal is to unify the nation behind a simple cause – Bring Aafia back
home with honor. When we learn to rise for the honor of our daughter we will have risen for our honor. When our religious and secular
parties unite for Aafia we demonstrate that we are one nation. When
Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Parsees unite for Aafia we will tell
the world that the white stripe in our flag has truth. When Pathans,
Punjabis, Sindhis, Muhajirs, Baluchis and Kashmiris unite for Aafia
I know that our nation lives. When I saw all political Parties lower
their flags in favor of the national flag in honor of Aafia, I knew that
deep down we all want to be proud Pakistanis.
How we react to the fates of these two prisoners will be our
legacy. Let us make it a legacy of dignity, not shame.
Ot h e r v o i c e s
48 O ther V oices
The Sentencing of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
On the morning of Thursday, September 23, 2010, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
was sentenced to 86 years of imprisonment by a federal judge in
New York City. The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman came as no surprise to this writer. We expected the
sentence to be harsh, and that is precisely why in the months leading
up to this fateful day, we spoke about the need for a mass mobilization at the courthouse.
After Aafia’s unjust conviction in early February (following a two
week kangaroo court proceeding), we instinctively knew that we
needed to send a message to the government, because the die had
already been cast in the U.S. Judiciary. Judge Berman would follow
a predetermined script which would result in a life sentence for a
woman already put through 7 ½ years of pure living hell.
If anything surprised me it was how clumsy and inept Judge Berman
appeared to be in following the script. He really exposed much of
the corrupting rot within America’s judicial system, revealing, in a
very profound way, the extent to which America has become a nation of laws without justice!
What follows is a summary of the notes taken by this observer at that
fateful sentencing.
September 29, 2010
--------------------------Notes from September 23rd
O ther V oices 49
Judge Berman began by walking the court through the accepted
facts of the case. He noted, among other things, that it has never
been definitively established why Aafia was in Afghanistan in July
2008. As he proceeded to outline the differing points of speculation
as to why she may have been there, he failed to even mention the
possibility that she may have been kidnapped and taken there! (I
found this deliberate omission glaring to say the least!)
Berman spoke about the 2 lbs of sodium cyanide and the documents in English and Urdu outlining U.S. targets, and the means to
conduct terrorist attacks, that Aafia was allegedly carrying in the
bag that she had with her. (A bag that Aafia testified during the trial
was given to her when she was briefly released in Afghanistan, in a
severely weakened and disheveled state after five years of secret and
torturous imprisonment.)
There were a number of issues raised and statements made
during the proceeding that generated many more questions for this
observer.
According to the government, Aafia twice attempted to escape
from Afghan custody; she had incriminating terrorism-related items
in her possession, and yet she was permitted to remain unrestrained
behind a curtain in a room of a police compound. Why? Does this
scenario even make sense from a security standpoint?
Judge Berman made repeated references to Aafia’s mental state
– acknowledging the damage done to her psyche when it suited him
to do so; and ignoring the damage done when it didn’t. He also noted
the frequent security searches that Aafia objected to during the time
she was in New York’s custody awaiting trial.
The “security searches,” as he termed them, were the strip
searches (which also included a cavity search) that this woman –
50 O ther V oices
already in maximum security confinement – was made to endure
each time she was moved from one point to another for any reason!
This treatment alone is severely damaging to the psyche of any modest woman – but especially for a hijab observing Muslim woman.
Berman stated that the jury convicted Aafia of all seven counts in
the indictment; that Aafia articulated her belief during the trial that
Israel was behind the attacks of 9/11; and that one of the employees
at the Brooklyn detention center (where she was being held) was
conspiring against America. Berman also accused Aafia’s oldest son
(Ahmed) of making contradictory statements since his release; he
noted that Aafia’s former husband (Mohamed Amjed Khan) claimed
to have seen her on a number of occasions, in passing, during the
time of her disappearance; and reiterated the point that there was
“insufficient evidence in the record” to determine where she was
between 2003-2008. (A process that he, at the government’s request
no doubt, helped to facilitate.)
Berman asserted that Aafia came into contact with radical elements while in Boston, according to the testimony of a professor
whose name I didn’t get. He noted how “complicated” the case had
been, and referenced an incident during the trial that resulted in his
decision to excuse a juror from the case who felt threatened by a
conspicuously attired observer in the courtroom - an observer who
made threatening and disruptive gestures before being removed by
U.S Marshalls. (And who I was later told was not only not arrested,
but was later permitted to return to the courtroom.)
Many of us in attendance that day felt that this unknown person
(who was never identified in media reports) may have been a plant
of the government, whose sole purpose was to sow additional prejudice in the collective mind of the jury against the defendant in the
dock. We also felt this way about the theatrics of one of the govern-
O ther V oices 51
ment’s witnesses (a soldier who took the stand during the trial). I
believe that may have been Captain Robert Snyder.
Defense attorney, Dawn M. Cardi, began by stating she respectfully disagreed with Judge Berman’s recitation of the so-called
“facts” surrounding this case. She noted how she had to get top secret clearance – a very time consuming and cumbersome process to be able to have access to certain “top secret” documents; only to
later be told, “there is no classified evidence relevant to this case!”
Cardi argued that Aafia suffered from “mental illness” and “diminished capacity,” and – according to one of the experts at Carswell, where she spent the first few months of her return to the U.S.
receiving medical treatment and psychological evaluations - she was
possibly schizophrenic.
She also argued that while the government has repeatedly used
Aafia’s academic major as an indication of the potential threat she
posed to America, Aafia was not a “biologist.” Her academic focus,
as reflected in the title of her thesis, was on how children learn. She
also noted that the jury found Aafia not guilty on “premeditation” (a
finding that Judge Berman deliberately chose to ignore).
Cardi also noted the WikiLeaks reference to Dr. Siddiqui, and
that according to these documents, Aafia was reportedly reaching
for the gun (M4 rifle) when she was shot! In referencing the judge’s
assertion that, “There is no question about the jury’s verdict,” Cardi insisted that there were indeed questions about the verdict. She
spoke about the manipulation of fear, and asked for a maximum
sentence of 12 years without the enhancements.
The government’s closing arguments could be summed up in the
words of lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher LaVigne (who stated, in the government’s successful pursuit of a Life
52 O ther V oices
sentence): “Any fear that was injected in this courtroom came from
witnesses like Captain Robert Snyder of the United States army…
looking down the barrel of a loaded gun and believing he would
die… This [Aafia’s alleged assault on U.S. personnel] was not some
random act. On that day the bottom line is, she saw her chance and
she took it.”
In my humble opinion, this narrative was successful - despite all of the contradictory material evidence and testimony
in Aafia’s favor - for three reasons: (a) the way this case was
consistently portrayed in the mainstream media; (b) the court’s
decision to bar certain exculpatory testimony that could have
proved Aafia’s innocence; (c) and the failure of Aafia’s well paid
defense team to vigorously put on the type of defense that a political trial of this nature required!
Aafia’s defense kept emphasizing mental illness, and at one
point Judge Berman interrupted (and in his own manipulation of
this argument) alternately raised doubts about the severity of Aafia’s
mental state, and then raised doubts about the prospect of Aafia getting any better.
Aafia flatly rejected the mental illness defense, defiantly stating
in a strong, clear voice: “I am not paranoid. I am not mentally sick,
I disagree with that! ”
(While there is no question that serious damage has been done to
our sister’s psyche, I personally believe that Aafia Siddiqui is sane
in a morbidly insane world! And while Berman spoke of how Aafia
consistently failed to cooperate with “authorities” – he said nothing
about the conditions of confinement which, no doubt, factored into
Aafia’s failure to “cooperate.”)
O ther V oices 53
Aafia addresses the court
Aafia began by insisting she was not concerned with her own welfare – she is content with the qadr (or will of God), and that she is
not being tortured. She did not say she was never tortured; she said
she was not “being tortured” at present.
(This is an important distinction for those of us who have followed this case closely; who are aware that Aafia was tortured when
she was secretly held; and are equally aware that, at minimum, Aafia
has been imprisoned in the U.S. for the past two plus years under
conditions that clearly violate our nation’s constitutional guarantee
against “cruel and unusual punishment.”)
Aafia accused someone by the name of Mr. Desmond (I believe)
of plotting against the United States. (This may have been a sign of
mental unbalance. ALLAH knows best.)
She again referenced the “secret prison(s)” that she had previously been held within; a secret imprisonment that the U.S. government adamantly refuses to acknowledge.
Aafia spoke about terrorists who were masquerading as Hispanics to do America harm, and of how DNA testing can be done to
determine the “pedigree” of a person. She also spoke about not being against all Israelis, but that there is an element among them that
are blameworthy.
She noted at one point, in a rather light-hearted way, that most
of the teeth in her mouth were not her own, because of the beatings
she endured while she was secretly held. She also noted how one of
her doctors had initially diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD), but how she was then pressured into saying otherwise – i.e.
that Aafia was schizophrenic.
54 O ther V oices
Aafia testified to how – before being brought to the U.S. - she
would regurgitate to the FBI the things that she thought they wanted
to hear (a mind “game” she called it), in the belief that by doing so
she would be able to get her children back. She passionately emphasized that she is against all wars!
She spoke about a dream she had involving Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him), and she advised the Taliban to put mercy
in their hearts. She referenced [British journalist] Yvonne Ridley’s
capture and subsequent voluntary conversion. She said in her dream
she saw the Prophet enter a room with American soldiers who were
captives of war. The Prophet (pbuh) spoke consoling words to them.
Her advice to Muslims was to not hate American soldiers.
She also (curiously for this writer) spoke about Israeli-Americans who had her daughter for years and never raped her. When
she said this I wondered if this was something she had been told, or
was this a conclusion that she had come to as a sort of psychological
coping mechanism? (Surely ALLAH know best.)
Moments later Aafia’s voice broke with emotion (and I know
that many within the main and overflow courtrooms choked up a
little) when she touched briefly upon the anguish experienced by a
mother who doesn’t know where her children are.
Judge Berman Rules (or so he thinks)
Berman proceeded to outline the reasoning behind the barbaric sentence he was about to impose on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. At the heart of
his thinking was his stated belief that rehabilitation for Aafia was
virtually impossible, as he proceeded to impose “enhancements”
that would significantly magnify her sentence.
O ther V oices 55
1. He found that the “hate crime enhancement” applied due to the national origin of Aafia’s alleged victims (U.S. personnel).
2. He found that the “official victim enhancement”
applied because the alleged intended victims were
government officials.
3. He found that the “terrorism enhancement” applied
because the alleged offense was intended to influence
or punish the government. (Keep in mind, Aafia was
not officially charged with even one terrorism count
in the indictment; and yet she received a terrorism
enhancement! Berman feebly argued that the defendant’s purpose or intent factors into the equation.)
4. He also found that a “criminal history enhancement” applied in the case. (I’m still trying to figure
out his twisted rationalization behind that one.)
5. He also found that an “obstruction of justice enhancement” applied, because Aafia gave (in his
view) false testimony during the trial.
6. Berman also found Aafia guilty of “premeditation,”
based on the claim that when Aafia allegedly fired
the M4 rifle at the agents and soldiers in 2008, she
screamed, ‘I want to kill Americans,’ and ‘Death to
America!’
Later, in an attempt to make it appear that he was truly wrestling
with what would constitute the appropriate sentence for Aafia Siddiqui, he rhetorically asked: Do we sentence concurrently or consecutively?
In truth, Judge Berman exemplified nothing more than soft-spoken,
anti-Muslim, pro-prosecution bigotry; bringing to mind (for this observer) one of the caustic assessments that the late New York State Supreme
56 O ther V oices
Court Justice Bruce Wright made about some of his fellow jurists on the
bench. (As he termed it, “Black Robes, White Justice”)
At one point there was a rather embarrassing moment for Judge
Berman, when in response to his deliberation over the issue of
whether or not Aafia fired the M4 rifle, one of the prosecutors stood
up to say the jury did not find that Aafia fired a weapon. The judge
than clumsily remarked that he found that she did.
After being hit with what constitutes a mandatory life sentence
(86 years), Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was the embodiment of faith and
grace. She again partially turned toward the witnesses in the courtroom seated behind her, and counseled the Muslims to not become
“emotional.”
At another point Aafia referenced the judge’s bias which became
even more evident at the conclusion of the trial (when he instructed
the empanelled jury before their deliberations). She reminded him
of how he had emphasized to the jury that if they found that there
was a gun in the room that Aafia potentially had access to, that they
had to find her guilty on that particular gun related count.
What came next – from a mindset of forgiveness and mercy
– would contrast sharply with the poor excuse for a “judge,” who
presided over her fate. Aafia was clearly in a much better place,
mentally and spiritually, than Judge Richard Berman and his fellow
persecutors were, in that regrettable process euphemistically called
a court of law.
After Berman pronounced his sentence, a woman in the main
courtroom, whose voice sounded familiar, hollered SHAME!
SHAME! SHAME ON THIS COURT! (I was in an overflow courtroom observing the proceedings over a video monitor) I later learned
that the voice – which was then threatened with removal from the
O ther V oices 57
court – belonged to a committed friend, Sara Flounders, of the International Action Center.
Judge Berman than expressed his concern about the absence of
any psychological road map to assist Aafia in her mental health challenges; while already having expressed his belief that: (a) she really
wasn’t that mentally unbalanced; and (b) even if she was, therapy
“would be to no avail” anyway, because she had not been cooperative in the past. (As noted earlier, Judge Berman alternately accepted or rejected the prospect of mental illness whenever it suited
his argument of the moment.)
What then followed became a lesson in faith and spiritual perseverance. Aafia counseled those present, and those who would get
the news later, not to be angry at anyone involved in this case – not
even the judge!
“This will shock the Muslims: I love America too…I love the
whole world...”
“I am one person, and the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon
him, forgave all of his personal enemies. Forgive everybody in my
case, please…the world is full of injustices…and also forgive Judge
Berman.”
“I don’t want any bloodshed…I want peace and to end all
wars.”
This was some of the nasiha (sincerely-given advice/counsel)
offered by this incredible, long suffering, 38 year old Muslim woman. Berman feebly expressed his gratitude for Aafia’s good wishes,
and said he wished all defendants were like her. (Can you believe
this?!)
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When Judge Berman informed the defendant of her right to appeal his verdict, Aafia’s response was: “I appeal to God…and he
hears me.”
A few closing thoughts of a personal nature
I left that federal courthouse in New York feeling like I had witnessed something truly amazing. Despite the anticipated outcome, I
felt inspired, and that a tremendous weight had been lifted off of me.
I had recently become truly aware of how much anger I had been
carrying around inside of me because of this case (and many others
like it).
Earlier that week, following a reception with Iranian President
Ahmedinejad in New York City, I verbally lashed out at a Muslim
leader for his attempt at defending the indefensible. In that moment
I felt nothing but contempt for him and others like him (“leaders”
connected to “Major Muslim Organizations” who failed to issue
even one press release, or community alert, in defense and support
of a Muslim woman like Aafia Siddiqui!)
In those moments, outside of that New York City hotel, all of
the disappointments and indignities that I had been forced to endure
over the past two years (over this one case) came flooding over me;
the doors that were slammed in my face; the back-biting emanating from “leaders” within my own community; the very personal
assaults that were made through my family; the sleepless nights;
the moments of isolation; the efforts that were sometimes made to
prevent much needed material resource from coming our way – all
of this came flooding over me as this brother attempted to make me
feel as if I was wrong for putting undo pressure on him and his fellow play it safe procrastinators.
O ther V oices 59
I was so angry that I felt like I could hit this brother, after we left
each other I felt ill; I felt physically ill. As I calmed down, I remembered something that President Ahmedinejad had said in his closing
remarks to all of the Muslim leaders assembled before him: “They
want to make us angry…Don’t let them make you angry.”
In that moment I realized the anger I felt wasn’t just about Aafia
Siddiqui. It was a volcanic accumulation of all of the pent up emotion that had been building for many years. Aafia’s case was simply
the one that brought it all to a head.
Later that night, I pleaded with Almighty ALLAH (The Beneficent, The Merciful) to help me deal with my internalized rage…and
a few days later in a NYC courthouse, ALLAH answered my prayer
in a vey profound and unexpected way.
Thank you, Aafia.
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CRIMINAL JURISDICTION
Criminal Law Blog by Defense Lawyer John Floyd and
Mr. Billy Sinclair
December 5, 2010
WIKILEAKS RENEWS DR. AAFIA SIDDIQUI MYSTERY
86-year prison term for Dr. Siddiqui:
Victory in Courtroom is Loss on
Worldwide Public Stage
T
his website has maintained an ongoing interest in the bizarre
case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. We have stated we do not know if
the Pakistani native is a brilliant neuroscientist or an al Qaeda terrorist as our Government has repeatedly charged she is. What
we do know is that our Government has cloaked the Siddiqui case
in such mystery and secrecy that we believe she was most likely
kidnapped, along with her three children, by Pakistan’s infamous intelligence agency in Karachi in 2003 and turned over to our Government who placed her in secret detention in Bagram military prison
in Afghanistan, where she was subjected to torture and other forms
of debilitating abuse.
Just months after U.S. District Court Judge Richard M. Berman, sitting in the Southern District of New York, imposed an
86-year prison term on Dr. Siddiqui following her conviction for
shooting American military personnel after her detention in Ghanzi,
Afghanistan in July 2008, the highly publicized and controversial
O ther V oices 61
WikiLeaks disclosures of U.S. State Department classified cables has
reawakened what the British newspaper, The Guardian, calls “one
of the most vexed mysteries of the Bush-era ‘war on terror.”
One cable from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, dated
July 31, 2008 (two weeks after Siddiqui’s capture in Afghanistan),
stated: “Bagram officials have assured us that they have not been
holding Siddiqui for the last four years, as has been alleged.” Earlier
cables from the embassy in February addressed the widespread public protest and outrage in Pakistan following Siddiqui’s conviction
in February 2010. At that time U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson
charged the protests were the result of “one-sided” media coverage
in Pakistan about the case.
The mystery surrounding Dr. Siddiqui’s strange disappearance
from Karachi in 2003 assumed an international life form in 2008
when, according to The Peace thru Justice Foundation, four men
escaped from the Bagram prison and began to share stories about
a Pakistani woman known as “Prisoner 650” who had been repeatedly subjected to torture and physical abuse at the hands of U.S.
Government and military personnel. After a British citizen named
Binyan Mohamed was released from U.S. secret detention, he positively identified a photograph of Dr. Siddiqui as “Prisoner 650.” The
Prisoner 650/Dr. Siddiqui story was picked up by British journalist Yvonne Ridley who coined her as the “Gray Lady of Bagram.”
The “Gray Lady” term was employed because Ridley said “Prisoner
650” appeared to be a “ghost” by all those who saw her and heard
her screams echoing following torture sessions at the infamous Bagram prison.
During Dr. Siddiqui’s trial last February, the Government went
to great lengths to keep the five years she disappeared from the face
of the earth “off limits” to the jury that convicted her. Why? Because
the Government, we believe, is hiding secrets about what it did to
62 O ther V oices
Dr. Siddiqui during those five years. Tragically, whether or not Dr.
Siddiqui was ever actually in Bagram prison and tortured there is
no longer the real issue. The issue now is that the world believes
she was, especially the people of Pakistan. Perception is often more
powerful than reality.
Should we be concerned about what the people of Pakistan think
about the United States? Yes, as long as we are sending billions of
dollars in military and economic aid to the country to secure their
assistance in our so-called “war on terror,” we must have good relations with its people. The WikiLeaks cables themselves reflect that
far beyond the Dr. Siddiqui case our relationship with the Pakistani
government, particularly its intelligence and military branches, is
strained to say the least. The Dr. Siddiqui affair is, and will remain,
a sticky-wicket in trying to work through these tense political and
military relationships.
The American public will never know all the immoral, unethical
and illegal things our Government did during the Bush-era “war on
terror.” The outrageous tragedy about this so-called war-on-terror
declared by former President George W. Bush in the wake of the
horrible 9/11 Twin Tower attacks is that it has cost us more, both in
human lives and economic loss, than any terror attack the war was
designed to prevent would have cost us. In Iraq alone, we have incurred 4,429 deaths and 32,937 wounded or seriously injured while
another 320,000 of our returning troops suffer from some form of
psychological trauma and an average of 18 are committing suicide
each day in this country. In Afghanistan, we have incurred 1,415
deaths and 2,309 wounded or seriously injured, and the number are
increasing daily. The total costs of these two wars—most of which
was waged “on credit” during the Bush years—to American taxpayers is nearly $1.2 trillion.
O ther V oices 63
The earliest possible withdrawal date from Afghanistan has now
been set for 2014, with some military experts saying it may be another ten years before we see a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces
from that incorrigible country. All U.S. forces are scheduled to be
withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011. In the meantime we will
continue to experience more human casualties and irreparable damage to our national economy and democratic reputation as we wage
the so-called “war on terror.” The costs of funding these wars, both
on the battlefield and in the human damage they inflict on our military personnel, will increase exponentially and remain a fiscal drain
on our economy. And just to put this issue into a clearer perspective,
the House Veterans Affairs Committee was recently informed by
prominent economists that the lifetime medical care and benefits for
troops returning from these two wars, who were disabled by their
service, will cost taxpayers another $1.3 trillion.
And what is the end result of these staggering costs to human
lives and our economic well-being: the United States has become an
international boogeyman attracting more “terrorists” who are willing to harm and attack the United States than there were in 2001.
The terrorists have won the war—if not on the battlefield, then in
the hearts and minds of many young people worldwide who now see
America as “foreign occupiers” and “oppressors” trying to rule the
world with the facade of Democracy but the reality of empire. We
have become to approximately one-third of the world’s population
the spit of the earth.
In Pakistan alone, with our predator drone strikes, we have created more “militants” (or “terrorists” depending upon the locale)
than we have eliminated. These drone attacks began in Pakistan in
2004. The New America Foundation reports that there have been
199 drone attacks in northwest Pakistan with 103 of them coming
in 2010 alone. Hundreds of innocent Pakistani civilians have been
killed in these attacks. Pakistani authorities report that in 2009 alone
64 O ther V oices
708 innocent civilians were killed in 44 drone attacks with only five
of these strikes hitting al Qaeda or Taliban “terrorists,” meaning that
140 innocent Pakistanis had to die in order for us to kill one terrorist.
Is there any wonder why we are so hated in the tribal regions that
protect Osama bin Laden and his terrorist cohorts?
And hanging over all these innocent lives lost, and the loss of
“good will” among Pakistanis for Americans they have produced, is
the symbolic case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. This one woman, who many
believe has been driven into the darkest depths of mental illness at
the hands of American torturers, now looms as a dark cloud over
every American and Pakistani relation. We will never truly have any
semblance of trust with the Pakistani people again so long as we
keep the “Gray Lady of Bagram,” who has become a national icon
in her country, incarcerated in an American prison labeled a “threat”
to our national security. As a gesture of good will, our Government
should find a way to send Dr. Siddiqui home to be with her people,
her family and her surviving children. If our Government can swap
10 “sleeper” Russian agents for four Americans held in Russian
prisons as it did this past summer, then it can certainly return Dr.
Siddiqui to her native Pakistan.
The bottom line is this: Dr. Siddiqui has not killed a single
American. We have killed thousands of innocent Pakistanis trying
to kill al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban insurgents who pose no legitimate threat to Americans as they sit in the rugged mountains of
northwest Pakistan. The political damage caused to the Pakistani
government and the loss of international goodwill to our country is
simply not worth keeping Dr. Siddiqui in an American prison for the
rest of her natural life.
O ther V oices 65
The WikiLeaks on Aafia Siddiqui
“P
lausible Denial” is one of the oldest tricks in the government playbook, and that is precisely what we are getting
in the WikiLeaks release on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.
While U.S. “diplomats” may, or may not, have been aware
of Aafia’s whereabouts, her captors, which included American
agents, knew precisely where she was! Anyone who objectively
connects the dots of what is known will easily be able to see this for
themselves.
The U.S. embassy reportedly wrote on July 31, 2008, “Bagram
officials have assured us that they have not been holding Siddiqui
for the last four years, as has been alleged.” Well this is precisely
what Bagram and Pentagon “officials” said to the British investigative journalist Yvonne Ridley in 2008. They initially denied that
any woman was being held at Bagram. They were later forced to
retract that lie, only to compound it with another: Ok, There was one
woman, but it wasn’t Aafia Siddiqui.
What do we know? According to Yvonne Ridley and Moazzam Beg (a former unjustly held “war on terrorism” detainee), we
know that four men escaped from Bagram in 2008, and, in recounting their observations and experiences, shared information about a
young Pakistani woman who could only be identified by her number “650.” We know that this woman suffered physical abuse and
torture; and that she was also tortured mentally and emotionally (as
only a mother could be) by having her children torn away from her,
and not knowing where they were.
66 O ther V oices
What we know is that after a former British detainee, Binyan
Mohamed, was released from his secret detention and allowed to
return home, he positively identified Aafia Siddiqui, from a photograph, as the woman he SAW WITH HIS OWN EYES at Bagram.
What we know is that a request was made, and a determination
given, that during the trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui at a federal courthouse in New York City, those missing five years in Aafia’s life were
officially ordered “off limits.” The only time we got a partial glimpse
into those missing years was when Aafia took the stand herself, and,
over the repeated objections of government prosecutors, pulled back
the curtain just a little! Why did they object? Because the government has a lot to hide.
And finally, we also know that in March 2003 Pakistani officials
initially admitted to capturing Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and handing her
over to the Americans; only to later backtrack on that admission - no
doubt, after realizing how much of a political hot potatoe it might
become in the near future.
While the trial has now ended, and Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been
safely put away, efforts are still being made to keep this long suffering woman in complete and total isolation. She does not have the
same visitation rights as other prisoners – not even with family! Her
brother Muhammad has been told, “special rules” apply to your
sister! (Why? Because the oppressors still feel the need to cover
their asses.)
I believe it was Winston Churchill who once said: “During times
of war, the truth is so precious it must be attended by a bodyguard
of lies.”
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What we are seeing in the WikiLeaks release on Dr. Aafia
Siddiqui, is nothing more than that in a nutshell; a 21st century
manifestation of a rather dubious principle still in play.
The struggle continues...
(December 1, 2010)
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The Aafia Siddiqui Case: A New Turn As
Lawyers Release Explosive, Secretly
Recorded Tape
By Victoria Brittain, CounterPunch, February 14, 2011
I
n 2003 an MIT-educated expert in children’s learning patterns,
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, disappeared with her three children in Pakistan. Was she, as the Americans said, an Al-Qaeda operative
who in 2008 emerged after five years undercover, carrying a handbag full of chemicals and plans for major terror attacks in the US,
and then attempted to shoot US soldiers? Or was she, as her family, and most people in Pakistan have always maintained, seized by
Pakistani agents for reasons unknown?
Now new evidence of the kidnapping of Dr Siddiqui prises open
part of one of the most shocking of the myriad individual stories of
injustice in the “War on Terror.” It also underlines the recklessness
and perfidy of a key United States’ partner in the “War on Terror,”
which carries its own threat of explosion.
Dr. Siddiqui was sentenced in a New York court last year to
86 years for the attempted murder of US soldiers in Afghanistan.
Her mysterious five-year disappearance before that, her reappearance in Afghanistan in 2008, her subsequent trial in the US, and the
confusion surrounding all these events, have made Dr. Siddiqui’s a
symbolic case in much of the Muslim world. Now a senior law enforcement officer has claimed to have been involved personally on
the day she was seized, with her three children, by Pakistani police
agents in Karachi in March 2003 and handed over to the Pakistani
intelligence agency, the ISI.
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The FBI put out a “wanted for questioning” alert for Dr. Siddiqui
just before she disappeared. She was later high on the US wanted
list, with the US claiming that she was living undercover as an AlQaeda agent. She was a “clear and present danger to the US”, the
then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft said in 2004. For all these
years the Pakistani government repeatedly denied holding her, and
after her arrest in Afghanistan in 2008 spent $2 million on US lawyers for her trial. After her conviction, the Pakistani Prime Minister
Yusuf Raza Gilani committed himself to work for her return from
a US prison. Dr. Siddiqui had become “the daughter of the nation”
and the centre of a popular cause he could not afford to ignore.
The new evidence, on a secretly recorded audio tape, is a potential earthquake in the chronically unstable political situation in
Pakistan, where rage against the US runs deep and wide, especially
as civilian casualties mount with the use of drone aircraft. Already
the case of Aafia Siddiqui has periodically brought tens of thousands
of people out on the streets in the last two and a half years, in protest
at what has been done to her by the United States’ military and legal
systems since she reemerged, in US custody and seriously wounded,
in 2008.
The Pakistani media have always claimed that the ISI was responsible for her disappearance and that the Americans were involved too. The tape reopens the whole question, not just of Dr. Siddiqui, but of the corroding effect of the US alliance with Pakistan’s
military and intelligence elite in a “War on Terror,” which has had so
many Pakistani victims. The ISI has run its own agendas, hand-inglove with various US officials at various periods, ever since the war
against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then becoming godfathers of
various Afghan factions tearing that country apart. There are plenty
of astute Pakistani journalists with the language skills to use this
tape to the utmost to embarrass their own security services and the
government.
70 O ther V oices
For the US too there are questions to answer about the extensive
cover-up of what happened to Dr. Siddiqui and her three children —
two of whom are US citizens, and appear to have spent five traumatized years separated from their mother and from each other, in various prisons. It is scarcely credible that high officials in the Bush and
Obama administrations over the years were unaware of what their
troublesome allies in Pakistan had done with her and her children.
On April 21 2003, a “senior U.S. law enforcement official” told
Lisa Myers of NBC Nightly News that Siddiqui was in Pakistani
custody. The same source retracted the statement the next day without explanation. “At the time,” Myers told Harpers Magazine, “we
thought there was a possibility perhaps he’d spoken out of turn.”
According to the Associated Press, “[t]wo federal law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, initially said
31-year-old Aafia Siddiqui recently was taken into custody by Pakistani authorities.” But later, “the US officials amended their earlier
statements, saying new information from the Pakistani government
made it ‘doubtful’ she was in custody.”
An FBI spokesperson also formally denied that the agency had
any knowledge of Dr. Siddiqui’s whereabouts, stating that the FBI
was not aware that she was in any nation’s custody.
Dr. Siddiqui’s mother was visited by an unknown man a few
hours after her disappearance and warned to keep her mouth shut
if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again. In
2003, in a closed hearing when the FBI had subpoenaed some documents from Dr. Siddiqui’s sister, an FBI official confirmed to her
family that she was alive and well, but would answer no questions
on her whereabouts.
O ther V oices 71
The new audio evidence was secretly taped in a social situation
last year; children can be heard in the background. It was given,
unsolicited, to one of the many lawyers involved in Dr. Siddiqui’s
case in the US. The source, whose identity has been protected, told
lawyers at the International Justice Network that he had made the
tape after a social evening when he had heard shocking things about
Pakistani counter terrorism, about the fabrication of evidence, and
about Dr. Siddiqui’s disappearance, discussed casually by a senior
official. He felt outraged and returned for a second evening with a
recorder and got some of the previous discussion repeated. “If it can
help anyone I had to do it,” he said to the IJN Executive Director
Tina Foster who has represented Dr. Siddiqui’s family since January
2010.
IJN are experienced hands in war on terror cases. They represent
a number of prisoners in Bagram air base prison in Afghanistan,
some of them rendered from Abu Ghraib, Dubai and Thailand by the
CIA, as well as several disappeared people in Pakistan.
The witness is a Pakistani/American and he has been extensively interviewed by IJN’s lawyers, who tell me they are entirely
confident of the tape’s authenticity, the source’s account and thus the
identity of the prime subject.
IJN’s source says he was introduced by a mutual friend whose
home he was visiting, to a man he identified to lawyers at the International Justice Network as Imran Shaukat, the Superintendent of
Police for Sindh province.
A full report, and the four hour tape, in Urdu, Punjabi and English, was released by the International Justice Network in the United
States at 6am EDT on Monday February 14, and can be accessed
here with the permission of the witness. Portions of the tape con-
72 O ther V oices
cerning Dr. Siddiqui were made available to this reporter and were
independently translated for this article.
Mr. Shaukat (who is voice 2 on the tape) says, “I am stationed
in Karachi. I head the counter terrorism department for Sindh province.”
In the key passage in the tape for the Siddiqui case he is asked
by:
Voice 1 (who is the witness): “Did you arrest her?”
V2: “Yes, I arrested her. She wore glasses and a veil … When she
was caught she was travelling to Islamabad … She was hobnobbing
with clerics …
V1: “ So what happened after the arrest. Did ISI ask for her custody?”
V2: “Yes, we gave her to ISI”
V1: “ISI or something else?”
V2: “ISI, so we gave her to them.”
Mr. Shaukat also describes her as “stick thin” and “a psycho”,
and, elsewhere as “not a handler, a minor facilitator” — presumably for Al-Qaeda — and he mentions a connection to Osama Bin
Laden. Asked then why couldn’t she help them get Bin Laden, he
replies, “Well, they are not fools. They wouldn’t inform her of their
forwarding address.” And he says too about the children, “we took
them with us. They were American nationals, children are American
nationals, they were all born there.”
There is some discussion on the tape about the return of her
daughter, Maryam. (Two unidentified voices are also heard.)
O ther V oices 73
V1: Oh, another thing. They found her daughter yesterday.
V2: She’s home already.
V1: Yes, she’s home. She speaks English only. She was in the prison.
She is seven or eight years old. And she only speaks English.
UM1: Eight years old?
V1: Yeah. Children were in prison and they spoke to them in American English.
UM1: Is she home?
V1: Yeah. They got her home.
V2: It’s five or six months.
UM2: Is she in Karachi?
V1: She got home today, yesterday.
V2: Well, it goes back to before I came here.
V1: I read the news just yesterday, today. Maybe, in the night.
V2: It’s two or three months old.
All that has been reported in the public domain to date is that
Maryam was returned a day or two before the recording. But, according to the childrens’ lawyer, Tina Foster, Mr. Shaukat’s description is consistent with how Maryam was repatriated to Pakistan.
74 O ther V oices
Elsewhere in the tape Imran Shaukat talks about how the Pakistani police and ISI work to “disappear” or to use people they have
taken into custody. According to Amina Masood Janjua at Defence
for Human Rights, there are currently about 500 people who have
disappeared in Pakistan as part of the “War on Terror” — this does
not include Sindhi and Balochi separatists. Part of the audio describes the doctoring or manufacturing of documents, creating false
identities, using body doubles, with reference to various terrorist attacks, including Mumbai. “This is a game of double dealing, direct
them right and exit left,” Mr. Shaukat says at one point.
Such details are an explanation of the extraordinary litany of
contradictory stories about Dr. Siddiqui, including curious reported
sightings by family members, that were launched into the public
domain over the five years after her disappearance. In this John Le
Carré world of ruthless manipulation of the vulnerable, it is impossible to know how, or whether, she could have been used in counterterrorism’s goal at the time of finding Osama Bin Laden and other
Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.
From other sources it has been established that Dr. Siddiqui was
separated from her children for the five years of her ordeal, and that
the two older children, born in 1996 and 1998, were not together, but
in separate prisons, and that the third child, Suleman, who was six
months old on the day of the disappearance, probably died then.
For nearly eight years now, manufactured confusion has surrounded the disappearance and the subsequent whereabouts of Dr.
Siddiqui and her three children.
The confusion only deepened with the second section of the story, which was her mysterious reappearance in 2008 in Afghanistan,
and the bizarre circumstances of her being seriously wounded by
two shots to the stomach by a US soldier. John Kiriakou, a retired
O ther V oices 75
CIA officer with extensive background in Al-Qaeda-related work,
told ABC News, “I don’t think we’ve captured anybody as important and as well connected as she since 2003. We knew that she had
been planning, or at least involved in the planning of a wide variety
of different operations.” Such statements set the tone for the Western media on her return under arrest to the US.
Her subsequent trial in New York, ending with the 86-year sentence, is the third section, when, extraordinarily, Al-Qaeda and terrorism were not made part of the case against her, which was narrowly focussed on the alleged attempted murder incident.
Dr Siddiqui’s background was an unexceptional one of a highly-educated young woman from a privileged, professional family,
some of them settled in the US and most of them educated in the
West. She spent a decade studying at universities in Texas, and at
MIT — where she graduated in biology summa cum laude — and
at Brandeis, where she took a PhD in cognitive neuroscience. She
specialized in the science of how children learn, and in addition had
a class teaching dyslexic children. Besides her academic work she
lived a busy life in the Muslim community in Boston, attending cake
sales and auctions to raise money for Muslim refugees in the Bosnian
war. She was married to a doctor from Pakistan in a classic arranged
ceremony conducted by phone. The couple had three children.
Life in Boston soured when her marriage began to break down.
There are reports from her professors in Boston that they saw her
with bruises on her face. And her husband, Dr Amjad Khan, told
Harpers Magazine reporter Petra Bartosiewicz in 2008 that his wife
had once had to go to the hospital after he threw a bottle at her. There
are photographs of her with a deep cut across her face. She returned
home to Pakistan in late 2001. In a brief reconciliation back in the
US a few months later she became pregnant with her third child. On
August 15, 2002, after an incident in which witnesses claim that Dr.
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Khan pushed him, Dr. Siddiqui’s father collapsed and died of a heart
attack. A few days later, while Dr. Siddiqui was still pregnant with
their youngest child, Suleman, Amjad Khan separated from her and
immediately married again. Dr. Khan gave custody of the children
to Dr. Siddiqui on condition they received an exclusively Islamic
education.
Dr. Khan came under FBI suspicion in May 2002 for various
items purchased by him on the internet when the couple were living
in Boston. He said they were for big game hunting, and he was not
arrested, but both he and his wife had come under suspicion.
In March, 2003, a global alert went out with both of them wanted
for questioning by the FBI. A few weeks after Aafia Siddiqui disappeared, her husband had a four-hour interview with US and Pakistani agents, and US suspicions of Dr. Khan were dropped. About
two months later Dr. Khan travelled to Saudi Arabia for some time.
Dr Khan told Harpers Magazine that his “contacts in the agencies” informed him then that Dr. Siddiqui had gone underground.
He went on to say that he had no idea where his children were — a
claim he would later contradict. He also told Harpers that he and his
driver saw Dr. Siddiqui in a taxi in Karachi in 2005. But they did
not follow her. After her arrest in 2008 Dr. Khan told a reporter from
the Pakistani daily News that he thought his former wife was an “extremist” and that of course she had been on the run. After Ms. Bartosiewicz left Pakistan, she had an email from Dr. Khan saying that
he had received “confidential good news” from the ISI that Mariam
and Suleman were “alive and well” with their aunt Fowzia. (In fact
at that point one was in prison and the other was dead.)
Dr. Siddiqui’s disappearance in March 2003 came amid a feverish whirl of arrests and disappearances in Pakistan, including Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed to have been the mastermind
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of 9/11, and many other Al-Qaeda related attacks, and has been
named as the killer of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed was important enough to the Americans to be
water-boarded 183 times. Shortly after Dr. Siddiqui’s disappearance, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi [aka
Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali], was arrested in connection with 9/11. The two
men were taken to Guantánamo Bay, then to various CIA-run secret
prisons known as “black sites” for torture, before being returned to
Guantánamo Bay.
US officials then had Dr. Siddiqui on an Al-Qaeda “wanted” list
and linked her to Baluchi, claiming he was her second husband. Her
family, and other sources in Pakistan have denied the marriage, but
it remains probably the most repeated detail about her and the one
that has given her an indelible image as a terrorist. This was not the
only lurid story about her — she was also alleged in a UN report
to have been a courier of blood diamonds from Liberia for Al-Qaeda with a sighting reported there in June 2001. Her lawyer, Elaine
Sharp, stated that Dr. Siddiqui had been in Boston at that time and
she could prove it. That story died away, but the further damage to
her reputation was done.
For five years nothing sure was in the public domain about what
happened to her and the children, though the rumours grew, turning
her into a tragic martyr for many, or a poster for Al-Qaeda ruthlessness for others. Several former detainees at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan claimed to have seen her there, while US officials quoted
in WikiLeaks denied she had been.
A senior Pakistani journalist, Najeeb Ahmed, followed the story for five years and reported witness testimony of someone who
claimed to have been part of the arresting team, which he said was
a joint operation with the FBI. (Mr. Ahmed made a public statement
78 O ther V oices
about his research in 2009, but died the next day, reportedly of a
heart attack.)
In mid-July 2008 Pakistanti lawyers filed a habeas corpus claim
for Dr. Siddiqui in Islamabad. And within days, in Act 2 of the drama, Aafia Siddiqui reappeared, in Ghazni, in Afghanistan, allegedly
carrying in her handbag chemicals, instructions for making biological weapons, and plans for terrorist strikes with mass casualties in
the US. She was then involved in a shooting incident in a police
station in Ghazni in which she was badly wounded by a US soldier.
It is uncontested that she was seated behind a curtain in a small
room, where, according to the US soldiers, one of them put down his
gun and she came from behind the curtain, seized it and attempted
to shoot. She says she merely looked round the curtain. None of
the soldiers or FBI personnel present were hurt, but she was hospitalized with two shots in her abdomen and brought under arrest to
the US.
Act 3 was her trial in New York for attempted murder of soldiers
and FBI agents with an M4 rifle, picked up from the floor near a US
soldier. There were no charges of terrorism or Al-Qaeda links.
Dr. Siddiqui had a tangle of high-flying legal teams, several of
whom were not on good terms. Her first court-appointed lawyer, Liz
Fink, a famous New York political lawyer, withdrew, and the second
team, appointed by the court, was headed by Dawn Cardi, an expert
in matrimonial and family law. The lawyers funded by the Pakistani
government were led by Linda Moreno, an attorney with successful
experiences in two high- profile war on terror-related cases, those of
Professor Sami Al-Arian and Ghassan Elashi, and who is a Guantánamo Bay defence lawyer with security clearance. Ms. Moreno is
also known for earlier political work as one of the lawyers for the
American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier. Her team included Charles Swift, formerly a military defender of Guantánamo
O ther V oices 79
detainees who made a reputation as a critic of the Military Commission system, and Elaine Sharp.
Even the narrow grounds of the case on the shooting was full
of curiosities and contradictions: there was no physical evidence on
the gun of Dr. Siddiqui having held it, no bullet casings from it or
holes in the walls of the small room where it took place, except
from the other gun which wounded her. Defence counsel made two
visits to Afghanistan to get the forensic evidence, which could, and
should, have got the whole case dismissed. Linda Moreno described
the defence forensic case as “very compelling, with no physical evidence whatsoever that she ever touched the gun … no DNA, no fingerprints, no bullets recovered, no bullet holes.” The military and
FBI witnesses, Ms. Moreno said, contradicted each other, and under
cross-examination even contradicted their own earlier stories. She
went on to say that “the government wanted to scare the jury with
stories of her alleged terrorist past, and steered away from the actual
case.”
One key piece of evidence was not in the trial and only emerged
from WikiLeaks, which revealed a Defense Department report that
was not released by the military, so was unavailable as evidence in
Dr Siddiqui’s defence. The incident report does not say Dr. Siddiqui
fired the gun she is alleged to have snatched and fired, merely that
she “pointed” it. “Six American soldiers took the stand — powerful
testimony for a jury. I argued, what happened at the front, stays at
the front. The WikiLeaks document would have added to my argument about the dubious credibility of the soldiers,” Ms. Moreno
told me.
Dr. Siddiqui’s relations with her lawyers were impossibly difficult and she tried repeatedly to fire them. Most never saw her except
in court. Linda Moreno told me, “She was clearly damaged — extraordinarily frail, very tiny. It broke my heart when Aafia did not
80 O ther V oices
trust anyone, me, the other lawyers … although I could understand
it. She reminded me of American Indian resisters I worked with way
back … her resistance was clearly to the legal process and she saw
all the attorneys as part of that process.”
Against the lawyers’ strongest advice, Dr. Siddiqui spoke in court
herself. She said that she had been tortured, and rendered to the US,
and that her children were also tortured in “the secret prison.” The
government never rebutted these allegations. But she lost the jury,
who looked openly sceptical. “Sadly, she came over as sometimes
arrogant and capricious, and sometimes rambling,” according to Ms.
Moreno. Another observer said, “she was very articulate, intelligent,
well-spoken, and people mistook that for well-functioning.”
With so much confected fear and prejudice against her going
back years, a media that did not hold back in its characterization of
her as Al-Qaeda Mommy, and the impact of six soldiers testifying
against her, a New York jury’s guilty verdict was probably a foregone conclusion. But Judge Berman’s sentence that would put her
away for life was not. Ms. Moreno described the event: “In my 30
years of trials I have never seen anything like what happened on
sentencing day — the judge walked into court and handed out preprinted power point presentations on how he had come to decide on
86 years …”
Two veteran lawyers not connected with this case, but with extensive experience in other cases related to the “War on Terror,”
described the sentence, respectively, as “extraordinary”, “ridiculous
… outrageous”, and one described the case as “absolutely full of
holes.” An appeal is planned.
Meanwhile part of the story of the missing five years is in the
heads of two of her three children — the two older ones who are US
citizens. When they emerged — separately — in Pakistan, they were
O ther V oices 81
reunited with Dr. Siddiqui’s mother, and her sister, Fowzia, who is a
Harvard-trained child psychiatrist and neurologist, in Karachi. They
have never told their stories, but even the little that is known hints at
the horror this family has lived through.
The older one, Ahmed, then aged 12, told his aunt that he only
met his mother the day after she was picked up in Ghazni, and that
he did not recognize her after five years apart. Fuzzy film footage of
them together, being questioned in a press conference the day after
his mother was found, has long circulated on the internet. This was
the morning before the shooting incident.
Ahmed remembers nothing about what happened to him next,
only that he was visited by a US consular official in Afghanistan
who told him that he was a US citizen. The official also told him that
his brother, Suleman, was dead.
Ahmed remembers being taken out of the taxi where he was
with his mother and siblings five years before, and remembers, before he lost consciousness, seeing the baby, six month old Suleman,
lying in the road and bleeding. Ahmed told his aunt that he had been
called Ali, and several other different names, while he was in custody, and that when he was told his name now was Ahmed, he knew
that meant he was going to be moved again. She initially reported
that he was suffering from PTSD and that he needed extensive psychological help.
His sister Maryam reappeared nearly two years later, in April
2010. She spoke perfect English with an American accent and no
Urdu. She was simply dropped off outside the family home in Karachi with a note on a string around her neck. At some stage the
Afghan prime minister Hamid Karzai was contacted by the family
for help in getting both children back.
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There are very powerful vested interests that have worked to
prevent Dr. Siddiqui from ever giving an account that would be believed of what happened to her. The same interests are still at work
trying to prevent the two children from ever becoming witnesses
in this back story of the “War on Terror.” Late last year a kidnap
attempt was made on the children, despite the family home being
guarded by armed Pakistani police 24 hours a day. Two men, carrying firearms and holding big sacks, were found behind the door of
the children’s bedroom by their grandmother. The men ran off when
she screamed, and were driven away by a waiting car nearby, before
the police guards to the house could catch them.
The release of the tape gives a lever to Pakistani public opinion
and Pakistani opposition politicians such as Imran Khan, who have
long supported the family, towards forcing an end to this sinister
ordeal, with the return home of Dr. Siddiqui.
And there is another lever just now. Tina Foster of IJN has written to the Interior Minister Mr. Rehman Malik, reminding him that
in over a year of meetings he has been promising to help in Dr.
Siddiqui’s repatriation. The letter says that now, when the US is
demanding the return of the US government employee Raymond
Davis, held after a shooting incident in Pakistan in which he is alleged to have killed two men, is the government’s best ever chance
to negotiate an exchange. The new threat by some congressmen to
withhold aid from Pakistan if he is not returned, Hilary Clinton cancelling a meeting with Pakistan’s foreign minister, and the report of
possible espionage charges against Davis, ratchet up a pressure that
could change the prospects for Dr. Siddiqui.
Whether Dr. Siddiqui will ever be able to tell the full story of
what happened to her over five years is another question. It is hard
to imagine making anything close to a recovery from such multiple
personal and family trauma, in which she was isolated from every
O ther V oices 83
solid link with her past identity. Did the ISI use her, or her identity,
on errands to Al-Qaeda? “A minor facilitator,” as the tape calls her?
The contradictions in her own reported words, such as allegedly
telling FBI agents while she was in a military hospital shot through
the stomach and in restraints, that she was indeed married to the notorious Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew Baluchi, are manifold,
but not any guide to the truth.
In her initial weeks in a US prison in Brooklyn, she exhibited
deeply disturbed behaviour such as saying she was saving her food
for her children. Her mental state has since deteriorated and is very
unpredictable, according to lawyer Elaine Sharp, who has visited her
several times. She is now incarcerated in solitary confinement in the
Carswell Federal Medical Centre at Fort Worth, Texas, the only US
prison medical facility for women. She has no contact with the outside world. Three of the four prison psychiatrists who interviewed
her for the court said they believed she was “malingering” and that
her mental illness was faked. But, given the record of some doctors’
contribution to government work in the “War on Terror,” it is hard to
find this persuasive in the face of the known facts of her separation
from her children in traumatic circumstances, her long isolation, and
the documented brutal procedures of the ISI in many other cases.
In the US, none of the lawyers, doctors, politicians and intelligence agents who devised and participated in the horrors done to so
many individuals as part of the “War on Terror” have paid any price
in public for it. But in this case there is the force of public opinion in
Pakistan, which will demand nothing less than public trials of those
responsible for ordering Dr. Siddiqui’s kidnapping, as well as those
who carried it out, and were part of the vast charade that has been
played with her over those years.
---------------------
84 O ther V oices
Victoria Brittain is a former associate foreign editor of the Guardian, and a Patron of Cageprisoners. Her books include Hidden Lives,
Hidden Deaths and Death of Dignity. She has spent much of her
working life in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
O
I ntroduction
ther V oices 85
Injustice in the age of Obama
Barack Obama, a former law professor, should have a
healthy respect for civil liberties, but his actions suggest not.
By Cindy Sheehan - October 2010 - Source: Al Jazeera
S
ince being the defendant in about six trials after I was arrested
for protesting the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, it’s my
experience that the police lie. Period.
However the lies don’t stop at street law enforcement level.
From lies about WMD and connections to “al Qaeda,” almost every
institution of so-called authority - the Pentagon, State Department,
CIA, FBI, all the way up to the Oval Office and back down - lie. Not
white lies, but big, Mother of all BS (MOAB) lies that lead to the
destruction of innocent lives. I.F Stone was most definitely on the
ball when he proclaimed, “Governments lie”.
Having clarified that, I would now like to examine a case
that should be enshrined in the travesty of the US Justice Hall of
Shame.
In February of this year, Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani mother
of three, was convicted in US Federal (kangaroo) Court of seven
counts, including two counts of “attempted murder of an American.” On September 23, Judge Berman, who displayed an open bias
against Dr. Siddiqui, sentenced her to 86 years in prison.
The tapestry of lies about Dr. Siddiqui - a cognitive neuroscientist, schooled at MIT and Brandeis - was woven during the Bush
regime but fully maintained during her trial and sentencing this year
by the Obama (in)Justice Department.
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Before 9/11/2001, Aafia lived in Massachusetts with her husband, also a Pakistani citizen, and their two children. According to
all reports, she was a quietly pious Muslim (which is still not a crime
here in the States), who hosted play dates for her children. She was a
good student who studied hard and maintained an exemplary record,
causing little harm to anything, let alone anyone.
After 9/11, when she was pregnant with her third child, she encouraged her husband to move back to Pakistan to avoid the backlash against her Muslim children - which was a very prescient thing
to do considering the Islamophobia that has only increased in this
country since then.
Tortured ‘truth’
Following the move to Pakistan, Dr. Siddiqui and her husband divorced. Her life took a horrendous turn just after. While Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) - supposed mastermind of the 9/11 plot
- was being water-boarded by the CIA 183 times in one month, he
gave Dr. Siddiqui up as a member of al-Qaeda. Was this a case of
stolen identity, or was Mohammed just saying random words like
you or I would to stop the torture?
There is some disputed “intelligence” that Aafia had married
KSM’s nephew, a tenuous allegation at best, and even so, guilt by
association has no place in the hallowed US legal system.
Following KSM’s torture-induced ‘insights’, Dr. Siddiqui was
listed by Bush’s Justice Department as one of the seven most dangerous al-Qaeda operatives in the world. A mother of three equipped
with a lethal ability to ‘thin-slice’ your cognitive personality in seconds. If alleged association and a healthy interest in neuro-psychology are the definitive hallmarks of a ‘terrorist operative,’ then Malcolm Gladwell better start making some phone calls to Crane, Poole
and Schmidt.
O
I ntroduction
ther V oices 87
A culture of falsehoods
Face it, we all know that since 9/11, there have been numerous false
“terror” alerts and lies leading to the capture and torture of hundreds of innocent individuals - and the heinous treatment we have
all witnessed to from Abu Ghraib. Additionally, we are supposed
to believe that multi-war criminal, Colin Powell, was “fooled” by
faulty intelligence so much so that he paved the way for the invasion
of Iraq by his false testimony at the UN, but we are also supposed to
unquestioningly believe the US intelligence apparatus when they lie
about others such as Dr. Siddiqui.
In any case, in a bizarre scenario - to make a very long story
short - Dr. Siddiqui and her three children disappeared for five years
from 2003 to 2008, resurfacing in Ghazni, Afghanistan with her oldest child, a son who was then 11. She claimed that for the years she
was missing, she was being held in various Pakistani and US prisons being tortured and repeatedly raped. Many prisoners, including
Yvonne Ridley, maintain she was incarcerated in Bagram AFB and
tortured for at least part of the five missing years.
After Dr. Siddiqui resurfaced, she was arrested and taken to an
Afghan police station where four Americans - two military and two
FBI agents - rushed to “question” her through interpreters. The FBI
and military, claim that they were taken to a room that had a curtain
at one end and that they did not know that Dr. Siddiqui was lying
asleep on a bed at the other side of the curtain. As you read below
it will become blatantly obvious that personnel involved from both
institutions totally fabricated their stories.
This is the Americans’ version: They entered the room and one
of the military dudes said he laid his weapon down (remember, they
were there to interrogate one of the top most dangerous people in the
world), and Siddiqui got up, grabbed the weapon, yelling obsceni-
88 O ther V oices
ties and that she wanted to “kill Americans.” All 5’3” of her raised
the weapon to fire and she fired the rifle twice, missing everyone in
the small room - in fact she even missed the walls, floor and ceiling
since no bullets from the rifle were ever recovered.
Then one of the Americans shot her twice in the stomach “in
self-defence.” It was shown at the trial that her fingerprints were not
even on the weapon. The only bullets that were found that day were
in Dr. Aafia’s body. How many stories of military cover-ups have we
heard about since 9/11? I can think of two right away without even
trying hard: Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch.
Hopeless injustice
Dr. Aafia’s side is this: After she was arrested, she was again beaten
and she fell asleep on a bed when she heard talking in the room she
was in, so she got out of the bed and someone shouted: “Oh no, she’s
loose!” Then she was shot - when she was wavering in and out of
consciousness, she heard someone else say: “We could lose our jobs
over this.”
Even with no evidence that she fired any weapon, she was convicted (the jury found no pre-meditation) by a jury and sentenced to
the aforementioned 86 years. It’s interesting that the Feds did not
pursue “terrorist” charges against Dr. Siddiqui because they were
aware that the only evidence that existed was tortured out of KSM so they literally ganged up on her to press the assault and attempted
murder charges.
Even if Dr. Siddiqui did shoot at the Americans, reflect on this.
Say this case was being tried in Pakistan under similar circumstances
for an American woman named Dr. Betty Brown who was captured
and repeatedly tortured and raped by the ISI - here in the states that
woman would be a hero if she shot at her captors - not demonized
and taken away from her life and her children.
O
I ntroduction
ther V oices 89
I believe Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is a political prisoner and now the
political bogey-woman for two US regimes.
In Pakistan, the response to her verdict and sentencing brought
the predictable mass protests, burning of American flags and effigies of Obama, and calls for Pakistan to repatriate Dr. Siddiqui.
They know who the real criminals are and who should be in prison
for life! At present, Hilary’s state department harps on about ‘soft
power’ and diplomacy, but what better way to quell US distrust
in the Muslim world than to try such cases with due diligence and
integrity.
In the US, not many people know about this case. Obviously
many people were Hope-notized by the millions of dollars poured
into the Obama PR machine - and believed when he said that his administration would be more transparent and lawful than the outlaws
of the Bush era.
I guess they were mistaken.
----------------------------Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Specialist Casey A. Sheehan, who
was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Since then, she has been an
activist for peace and human rights. She has published five books,
has her own Internet radio show, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, and has
been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Cindy lives in Oakland,
CA, and loves to spend time with her three grand-babies.
90 O ther V oices
A Tale of Three Accused Women: And Justice
American Style
A
comparative analysis of the criminal cases involving three
young women, two Americans and one Pakistani, the cases
of Amanda Knox, Casey Anthony, and Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
reveal just how arbitrary and capricious “justice” can be in the U.S.
legal system, and how conceptually flawed it can be in the collective
mind of the American people (generally speaking).
These three cases also reveal, in very graphic detail, the role that
race, class, gender, religion and politics often play in the pursuit of
justice in the western hemisphere.
Amanda Knox was prosecuted and convicted in Italy (along
with her Italian lover and an African immigrant) for the brutal murder of another young female foreign exchange student. Knox received a sentence of 26 years as a result. Now via the automatic
appeals process in European law (a superior quality, in my view, to
American law), and the recent decision by an appellate judge to allow an independent review of key forensic evidence that was used to
convict her - because the evidence was reportedly contaminated by
being mishandled by Italian investigators - Knox has a good chance
of winning release in the near future.
(If I were a betting man, I would wage it all on my belief that
Ms. Knox will be “legally” cleared and repatriated back to America
sooner than later.)
Casey Anthony, a young woman from Florida, was charged in
the death of her own child, Caylee Anthony. Despite the damning
evidence against her, Anthony was recently found not guilty of the
most serious charges in the murder indictment, and convicted only
for giving false information to the law enforcement officers who
O ther V oices 91
investigated the case. Anthony has now been released to an undisclosed location, and reportedly stands to make a fortune whenever
she decides to “tell her story.”
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani national, and committed Muslim woman, who came to the United States at the age of 18 for university study. She excelled academically at the University of Houston, MIT, and Brandeis University. She also distinguished herself
as a young leader of the Muslim student organization(s) to which
she belonged, and engaged in praiseworthy charitable work in the
greater Boston area. Aafia would later become a person of suspicion
(post 9/11), return home to Pakistan, and eventually become a target
of a rendition operation (along with her three young children - ages
six, four, and six months) in March of 2003.
After five years of secret detention and torture, Aafia would
mysteriously re-emerge in a weakened and disheveled state in Afghanistan; she would be shot and seriously injured while awaiting
re-interrogation; and soon after be brought back to the United States,
in 2008, to eventually stand trial (two years later) for allegedly “attempting to murder U.S. personnel” (FBI and soldiers) in Afghanistan in July 2008.
While Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony (young, white, nonMuslim females) became “tabloid darlings,” whose trials played out
in the public sphere like Reality TV dramas, the trial of Dr. Aafia
Siddiqui was shrouded under a cloak of near anonymity within the
United States - despite the presence of a significant number of reporters in the courtroom each day of the trial.
Knox and Anthony misled investigators (aka, repeatedly lied)
during their interrogations, while Aafia was forthright from start to
finish. Knox and Anthony initially tried to shift responsibility for the
crime that they were accused of committing on to an innocent per-
92 O ther V oices
son, and both had strong circumstantial evidence against them. In
Siddiqui’s case both the material and circumstancial evidence were
strongly in her favor; it was the government’s star witnesses that
perjured themselves on the witness stand during the trial (although
they were never charged with perjury)!
Casey Anthony received an extreme presumption of innocence
from a jury that saw a young white female who was facing the death
penalty, if convicted. (I predict that the presumption of innocence
principle will strongly kick in, post conviction, based on the alleged contamination of evidence, in the appeals process for Amanda
Knox.) And while Ms. Anthony had a fair and impartial jurist to preside over her case, Judge Belvin Perry, Aafia Siddiqui had just the
opposite. U.S. District Judge Richard Berman was openly biased
against Dr. Siddiqui from start to finish.
Anthony’s jury was sequestered in a hotel, cutoff from the outside world; while Dr. Siddiqui’s should have been! The jury in Aafia’s case left the courthouse each day, and were continually exposed
to the highly prejudicial, government-fed local media reports that
contaminated the court of public opinion; reports that were so unfair
and poisonous that they made any prospect for an impartial deliberation process almost impossible.
Anthony’s attorneys were given a lot of latitude in their defense
of their client; while Siddiqui’s attorneys were hamstrung (and in
the opinion of some observers, allowed themselves to be hamstrung)
to such an extent, that the missing fives years of her secret detention
were made off limits during the trial!
While Casey Anthony is a free woman (relatively speaking); and
Amanda Knox - who has benefited from a growing defense lobby,
and American press coverage that has been primarily positive - may
soon be a free woman; Dr. Aafia Siddiqui (who is not accused of
O ther V oices 93
harming anyone!) received a sentence of 86 years on September 23,
2010, and is now being confined at a notorious institution (known as
Carswell) on a military base in Fort Worth, Texas.
The well known peace activist, Cindy Sheehan, made a provocative observation regarding the outcome of the Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
trial, not long after her sentencing:
Even if Dr. Siddiqui did shoot at the Americans,
reflect on this. Say this case was being tried in Pakistan under similar circumstances for an American
woman named Dr. Betty Brown who was captured
and repeatedly tortured and raped by the ISI. Here
in the states that woman would be a hero if she
shot at her captors, not demonized and taken away
from her life and her children. I believe Dr. Aafia
Siddiqui is a political prisoner and now the political bogey-woman for two US regimes.
I couldn’t agree more...and so goes the tale of three accused
women, and “justice” American style.
RAMADAN 1432 A.H.
(August 7, 2011)
---------------------------------Postscript: as predicted, the murder conviction of Amanda Knox was
overturned by an Italian appeals court on October 3, 2011. Knox is
back in America with her family, reportedly working on a book with
a “well-connected agent” - while Dr. Aafia Siddiqui (an innocent
Muslim woman imprisoned in the land of liberty and justice for all)
continues to suffer in virtual silence on a military base in Texas!
Something to think about
BEFORE
AFTER
the
ch a l l e n g es
ahead
96 O ther V oices
Condemned By Their Silence
By Yvonne Ridley — September 21, 2010
T
here are literally millions of people across the world who are
now involved in the intriguing case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui and
they fall in to several categories.
The first is a huge army of ordinary people of faith and no faith
who represent many different nationalities and their aim is to see
justice and fair play delivered to Aafia.
The second is a small, but on the surface of it, more powerful
group of individuals who are ruthlessly ambitious; prepared to manipulate the truth and openly lie to elevate their own position to the
detriment of others and Aafia in particular.
These are numerous in the Pakistan government, past and present,
as well as the last two US administrations and includes the dark forces
at play which support them as well as the coterie of smooth-talking
diplomats and ambassadors who tread the corridors of power.
Then there are the others – perhaps the most despicable group of
all who are what I call fence sitters and spectators. The great Irish
philosopher Edmund Burke once said that evil would only triumph
if good people sat back and did nothing, and he was right.
With few exceptions the larger Muslim organizations have remained uncharacteristically quiet about Aafia’s case.
Why have they been muzzled? Correction. Why have they allowed
themselves to be muzzled? To their eternal shame they have remained silent about the plight of Dr Aafia Siddiqui because they
T he C hallenges A head 97
have been duped by an officially-sanctioned unofficial whispering
campaign.
The rule is simple brothers (and sisters), comrades, friends and
campaigners. If something is wrong it is wrong, entirely wrong and
in Aafia’s case there is something wrong about the kidnap, torture
and rendition of a brilliant academic and her three children.
The fence sitters in the US are a disgrace. Men without courage
or backbone are more to be pitied, I suppose as cowardice is a dreadful affliction in the battlefield that is life.
A yellow streak down the spine makes people look the other
way, blinkers their vision and forces them to adopt an Ostrich position. This makes it all the more easy for hate preachers like Pastor
Jones in Florida to emerge and threaten to burn the Holy Qur’an.
But Edmund Burke was right when he said evil will triumph if
good people sit back and do nothing. The leaders of the organizations I’ve mentioned are good people but they are frightened and I
pray that one day they will get the courage they so desperately need
to stand up and be counted.
And in these troubled times it does take courage to stand up
against an arrogant, bullying, intimidating political machine which
brought words like kidnap, torture, rendition, water-boarding and
extra-judicial killings in to daily use.
Just a few hours remain before the resumption of a trial in a New
York court which is being presided over by Judge Richard Berman.
To his eternal shame he is one who has remained silent about the
manner and style with which Dr Aafia Siddiqui was presented in his
court.
98 O ther V oices
How the hell can a Pakistani citizen who allegedly committed a
crime in Afghanistan be tried in his court without an official extradition procedure at the very least? Why did he not demand that the
paperwork was at least in order? He has presided over a mis-trial
from the outset.
He deemed the defendant mentally fit to stand trial but not mentally capable of determining her own legal team. Whenever Dr Aafia Siddiqui – a brilliant neuro scientist bordering on genius by the
way – attempted to sack her lawyers he refused her request saying
she wasn’t mentally fit to make the decision. You can’t have it both
ways, Your Honour.
Judge Berman has alas, so far, remained silent about the private
behind closed door meetings he has had with the Pakistan Ambassador Hossein Haqqani. Another good reason for a mistrial if only
the legal team had the backbone to challenge the judge in his court.
The trouble is, so-called ‘Dream Team’ lawyers Charlie Swift
and Linda Moreno’s very lucrative two million dollar trial was being
paid for by the Pakistan Government, making Mr Haqqani the overall client. Hmm, how does that one work when the Pakistan government colluded in the first place with the US intelligence agencies to
kidnap Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her three children from the streets of
Karachi in March 2003? Another reason to declare a mis-trial.
And what of the ubiquitous Mr Haqqani? He’s not a career diplomat. In fact, he holds US citizenship, or has aspirations to, making
him a very peculiar choice as Pakistan’s man in Washington. Once
his foray into the world of diplomacy comes to an end he’ll resume
his career as a lecturer in America, something [of which] his US
controllers remind him of on a regular basis.
His Excellency has certainly been a busy little bee with regards
Dr Aafia’s case … briefing some of my colleagues in the western
media telling them ‘off-the-record’ what a bad woman she is!
Just recently his cover was blown when he refused the very excellent female politician Cynthia McKinney a visa to Pakistan. Cynthia was part of an international delegation due to travel to Islamabad to raise concerns about the case with the government there.
Mr. Haqqani, who thinks nothing of giving visas to Blackwater
guns-for-hire and mercenaries heading to the fresh killing fields
of Pakistan saw fit to stop the former US Congresswoman from
travelling there.
He squirmed and wriggled after being hoisted by his own petard,
but like a worm impaled firmly on a fishhook of his own making,
he could not escape the humiliating exposure of his duplicitous
behaviour.
If he has been briefing against Dr Aafia Siddiqui all this time,
one can only imagine what nonsense he filled in Judge Richard Berman’s head during their private meetings. In any other country this
sort of revelation would be a career wrecker for both men, but justice is the US is a strange beast.
(Yes, this is a serious allegation to make and I would have asked
the judge personally, but he has banned me from using his fax and
phone! Hilarious really, when you consider he has no legal jurisdiction in London, where I live. Obviously he thinks if he can hold a
trial on a crime allegedly committed in Afghanistan, he can have me
renditioned and charged with contempt of court.)
But let’s get back to Dr Aafia’s case which has nothing to do
with justice and everything to do with protecting the names and
100 O ther V oices
reputations of a collective of men and women in the US and Pakistan – from presidents past and present to lesser politicians and their
craven diplomats.
And if it means sacrificing one Dr Aafia Siddiqui on the fire of
their burning ambitions then these ruthless people have shown they
are more than capable of doing it.
What you have to decide now is if you are a fence sitter or a
fighter for justice.
Doing the right thing isn’t always easy but there is a growing
army of ordinary people out there who will continue to campaign
for justice for Aafia.
We will not be silent – nor will we throw in the towel after Thursday. That is when our campaigning will really begin.
In the interests of justice, commonsense and decency let all
concerned bring an end to this farce now and reunite this innocent
mother with her family.
* Yvonne Ridley is President of the European branch of the International Muslim Women’s Union and a patron of Cageprisoners.
Source: Information Clearing House.
Why have Muslims who knew Aafia been
so silent?
A
good friend of the Siddiqui family (who has also become a
valued friend of mine) - a man who has known Aafia, her
mother, sister, brother and his family for years - sent me the
following e-mail message during a particularly traumatic visit that
Muhammad recently had with his sister (only the second visit in 2
½ years):
Mauri,
I’m in Ft. Worth with Muhammad. He is attempting
to visit Aafia. He left for the prison early this morning. He never got a confirmation for the visit so he
wasn’t sure if they would let him in. It is now 12:30p
and he hasn’t come back to the hotel so they must
have let him in.
I am stuck between wanting to yell as loud as I can
to the entire world about what I know and what the
family has told me in confidence. Talk about a rock
and a hard place.
I have heard from Aafia’s sister Fowzia. She did write
the e-mail quoted in the report, but had not intended
for it to be made public. Beyond that all I can do is
ask Muhammad to call you.
In the eight years since Aafia and her children were
kidnapped I have not had any problem writing about
this case. I can’t put three words together about this.
Even if I did, the prison reserves the right to conduct
all investigations. No one can prove anything unless
102 O ther V oices
the prison chooses to admit to something.
I woke up this morning thinking that maybe God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah might not have been
an overreaction. Maybe the Noah flood was a good
idea after all.
How you manage to attend all these court proceedings without just wanting to bash your head into a
brick wall to make the pain stop is beyond me. I’m
only dealing with this one case. I have friends who
stopped calling years ago. I work for people who
make believe they don’t know what I’m doing when
I head to Ft. Worth. Family members think I’m nuts.
One of my brothers told me flat out that he doesn’t
want to hear anything about Aafia. He and his family
do not come to any family events if I am going to be
there.
On the other hand every atom in my body says I need
to do this for Aafia’s family. And do more. But right
now I am literally ten miles away from Aafia, and for
all I can do I might just as well be in Karachi.
I’m sorry. The last twenty four hours have been a
little bumpy. I just needed to unload and you were
there.I understand that Eid al-Adha is this weekend.
Eid Mubarak.
Andy.
That email was prompted by yet undocumented reports of Aafia’s
already fragile health taking a precipitions decline; amid specula-
tions of rape, abortion, the possibility of cancer, and more institutional coverup of whatever the truth may be.
I could immediately empathize with the anguish conveyed by
Andy in his e-mail; and I appreciated his concern for my well-being.
There have been times, too many to count, when I have experienced
my own dark moments. These were the times when I’ve had to turn
to The Almighty for spiritual solace. (“O’ ALLAH, The One who
changes the hearts, make my heart firm upon faith.”)
Truth be told, however, some of my most difficult moments have
not come as a result of what an external enemy has done to me (or
to someone I care about), but from what members of my own faith
community are doing to themselves!
FEAR in the hearts of Muslim men and women who knew Aafia
Siddiqui when she resided in Boston has kept their better angels
in check…something as simple as fear combined with a crippling
self-interest. One notable exception has been Imam Abdullah
Faaruuq, of Masjid Alhamdullilah (Mosque for the Praising of
ALLAH/God) located in Roxbury, MA. His has been a consistent
voice in defense and support of the committed Muslim woman
named Aafia Siddiqui!
True faith, which embraces a belief in the divine qadr of ALLAH
(that nothing happens without ALLAH’s knowledge and permission)
is something that Muslims read about; are sometimes taught about
in “deen intensive” workshops and conferences in different parts
of the country; and is something that we often philosophize about
in our conversations; but true awareness of this eternal truth seems
rarely to travel beyond the throats of far too many of us. True acceptance of ALLAH’s qadr also means accepting the premise that if
a trial (or difficulty) befalls us, there is also a benefit in it for us, if
104 O ther V oices
we are resolute, and patiently persevere through the application of
our faith.
Faith is the greatest determinant of character; because at the end
of the day, our true character is best measured by how and where we
stand during times of challenge and controversy.
This spiritual malady is not unique to Muslims in America; it
is a chronic deficiency found among all “people of faith.” Among
the professed believers in Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), for example, it can be seen in the behavior of those who are sometimes
referred to as “Constantinian Christians” – or those who embrace
the philosophy of “Render unto Ceasar what is Ceasars, and render
unto the Lord what is the Lords” (with Constantine and/or Ceasar
appearing to have the lion’s share of claim on the souls of men).
In the 25 years that I’ve been involved in human rights advocacy, I cannot begin to count the times that I’ve seen people of all
hues sheepishly, and against their own consciences, cave into social
and/or political expediency. This particular case involving this Muslim woman (and my own faith community) has been the heaviest on
my heart.
Aafia’s case has exposed, like no other case or issue that I’ve
ever been involved in, the politics of FEAR, the politics of SELFINTEREST, the politics of TRIBALISM, and the politics of CAPITULATION to American imperialism. This is an oppressed and
brutally persecuted Muslim woman who Muslims in America, generally speaking, have failed to come to the aid of! It should also be
noted that Aafia’s plight places a special obligation, according to
The Noble Qur’an and Prophetic Sunnah, on Muslim men!
In my conclusion, let me state for the record that while things
at times have been difficult, I have encountered numerous other examples of committed Muslims (including a number of courageous
Muslim leaders) who have stepped up to the challenge, and opened
doors so that our sister-in-Islam, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, could begin to
receive at least some of the support that she rightfully deserves. And
for this I thank you - sisters and brothers (you know who you are) from the bottom of my heart!
May ALLAH make us worthy of being called Muslim (one who
submits his/her will to do the will of The Divine Creator of all life);
and through that submission become a voice for the voiceless, and
do our part to make America and the world a better place. Ameen.
In the struggle for peace thru justice,
106 O ther V oices
A Message from Aafia’s family
The statement below was released by the Siddiqui family following
Muhammad’s first visit with his sister in 2-1/2 years. Unfortunately,
the hope for sustained improvement did not last. The struggle must
continue throughout America!
L
ast April we were both honored and stunned when a hundred Americans gave up part of their Saturday to stand outside Carswell Prison for several hours in the hot Texas sun
to support our family’s effort to contact Aafia. The actions of those
courageous people responding to a call by The Peace Thru Justice
Foundation paid off almost immediately. Five days later Aafia was
allowed to call her family and she got to hear her children’s voices
for the first time in eight years.
This demonstration also set off an unexpected chain of events.
Within days the Pakistani Consulate responsible for the affairs of its
citizens in Texas visited Carswell and began communication with
prison officials. On the weekend of September 10, 2011, Aafia’s
brother was finally allowed to visit her. This was their first visit in
almost two and a half years.
The last time they saw each other was at her sentencing hearing
almost a year ago. Throughout the trial and sentencing proceedings
they were not allowed to speak to each other and one of the court officers made a point of sitting directly between them so they couldn’t
see each other.
We believe this visit is the direct result of the willingness of
American citizens to exercise their First Amendment right “of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.”
Our family would also like to thank the International Justice
Network for their advice and support. Credit must also be given to
Pakistan’s Consulate in Houston for their assistance and contributions in this effort.
Requests have been made for future visits in October and
November.
We are troubled because this visit required so much effort and
persistence by so many. The system says that as long as Aafia obeys
prison rules she is entitled to have visitors. We have not been told
that Aafia has violated the rules. We have been told that “our normal
rules don’t seem to apply to your sister.”
We are not asking for special conditions or privileges for Aafia.
We are asking that the rules that apply to all the other prisoners be
applied to her too.
Thank you for your support and God bless all of you.
Aafia’s Family
---------------------------
It should be noted that Muhammad’s anticipated October visit was
canceled in the 11th hour, and when he did get to visit his sister in
November (the last visit he’s had), he was not able to be in the same
room with her as before. He could only see her from the chest up,
and she looked like she did when she was first brought back to the
U.S. from Afghanistan in 2008 for her arraignment in New York City
(barely alive); when she had to be transported into the court-room
in a wheelchair. FMC Carswell (an institution with a notorious reputation) is doing terrible things to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. We must do
what we can to make the madness stop! If not now, when?
108 O ther V oices
Epilogue
An Open letter to the U.S. Government
Dear Sirs/Madams,
O
ne of the most common refrains in American political discourse is “God bless America.” The question arises: does
a nation have a moral obligation to strive to the best of its
ability to live up to the repeated supplication of such blessings? We
believe the answer is yes.
We believe that one of the most important indicators of the character of a nation is how it measures up on the scale of justice, and we
also believe that this serves as a good indicator of God’s providence
for that nation.
The imminent Islamic scholar, Sheikh ibn Taymeeyah
(1263–1328 CE) wrote: “Civilization is based on justice, and the
consequences of oppression are devastating. Therefore, it is said
ALLAH (God) aids the just state, even if it is non-Muslim; yet withholds His help from the oppressive state, even if it is Muslim.” In
that same spirit, American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson (1743
– 1826 CE) is reported to have shared a deeply held concern with a
close confidante when he wrote: “I tremble for my country when I
reflect God is Just; His justice cannot sleep forever.”
The Muslim American community, one of the most peaceful
and law abiding faith communities in the world, has genuine concern about the quality of justice in America – especially (but not
exclusively) post 9/11. Of the many cases that we could cite to justify this concern, one of the most egregious is the case of Dr. Aafia
Siddiqui.
E pilogue 109
Dr. Siddiqui is a Pakistani citizen who was educated and lived
most of her adult life in the United States of America. She came to
the U.S. at 18, and graduated with honors from MIT and Brandeis
University. She married and started a family in America, and also engaged in praiseworthy charitable work while residing in the Boston
area. (Two of her three children are American citizens by birth.)
Like thousands of active Muslims in America, Dr. Siddiqui came
under suspicion post 9/11. By March 2003, upon leaving her family
home in Karachi (Pakistan) to visit a maternal uncle in Islamabad,
Dr. Siddiqui and her three young children were forcibly removed
from a taxi (targets of a rendition operation) and made to disappear
for several years. Her youngest child remains missing to this day!
In July 2008, after re-emerging under mysterious circumstances,
in a weakened and disheveled state in Ghazni (Afghanistan), Aafia
was shot by an American soldier and illegally rendered to the US, in
contravention of international law. She was charged with “attempting
to murder U.S. personnel” in Afghanistan, and convicted in an unfair
trial that was rife with legal irregularities and gaping evidentiary
holes. She was subsequently sentenced to 86 years of maximum security confinement for an incident in which no one was injured but her.
Dr. Siddiqui’s continued imprisonment in the U.S. does nothing
to enhance America’s image abroad, nor does it advance American
foreign policy in the Muslim world. It only helps to create more animosity at a time when the US and Pakistani governments desperately need to win “hearts and minds” of both American and Pakistani
people, as well as the respect of the international community.
Dr. Siddiqui’s imprisonment will only continue to generate increased public outrage (both here and abroad), as her physical and
mental condition continues to decline in prison. In contrast, her
repatriation to Pakistan would do a great deal to restore public con-
110 O ther V oices
fidence in the U.S. justice system and the “rule of law.” Dr. Siddiqui
should be repatriated to Pakistan as soon as possible, and reunited
with her children on humanitarian or other appropriate grounds.
Finally, there is the issue of Dr. Siddiqui’s imprisonment conditions in the United States itself. While America has a constitutional
guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment, the world has witnessed the repeated violation of this professed guarantee as it pertains
to certain socially or politically marginalized persons in U.S. custody
– esp. accused Muslims post 9/11. The case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is no
exception. In fact, the case involving this young Muslim woman may
take the violation of this guarantee to a whole new level.
After five years of secret imprisonment and torture overseas, her
human rights (even as a prisoner) have continued to be violated in
the United States of America!
We, as concerned citizens, and as representatives of the MuslimAmerican community, urgently request that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui be repatriated back to her home in Pakistan as soon as humanly possible;
and until such time as repatriation occurs, that she be accorded her
full human rights (even as a prisoner) within the U.S. penal system
– i.e. that she be treated in a fashion that respects her human dignity
by prison authorities; that she be permitted regular visitation (esp.
with her family); and that she be permitted to communicate with
family, friends, and supporters beyond the walls of Carswell FMC,
in Fort Worth, Texas.
We thank you for your time in considering this appeal.
Respectfully Submitted,
and Families United for Justice in America
For Additional Information on the Campaign
for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui:
www.FreeAafia.org - for the official website and newsletter
www.ijnetwork.org - to access the official investigative report on
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui by the International Justice Network
www.justiceforaafia.org - to access the Justice For Aafia Coalition
website in Britain
The next public support mobilization for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui in Fort
Worth, Texas, will be held on Friday, March 30, 2012. For additional
information, or to contribute material support to the effort, contact:
11006 Veirs Mill Road
STE L-15, PMB 298
Silver Spring, MD. 20902
Tel: (301) 220-0133 or (202) 246-9608
E-mail: [email protected]
website: www.peacethrujustice.org

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

Transcription

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