Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized By American Injustice
By Guest Blogger • Feb 13th, 2010 • Category: Politics • 6 CommentsOn February 3, a Department of Justice press release headlined “Aafia Siddiqui Found Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court of Attempting to Murder US Nationals in Afghanistan and Six Additional Charges.”
At her scheduled May 6 sentencing, she “faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each of the attempted murder and armed assault charges; life in prison on the firearms charge; and eight years in prison on each of the remaining assault charges. SIDDIQUI faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison on the firearms charge.”
On February 3, New York Times writer CJ Hughes headlined: “Pakistani Scientist Found Guilty of Shootings,” convicting her on all seven counts, including attempted murder - “capping a trial that drew notice for its terrorist implications as well as its theatrics,” but omitting convincing evidence of Siddiqui’s innocence. Instead, Hughes said she was arrested with “instructions (in her purse) on making explosives and a list of New York landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.” Her defense team acknowledged their existence, but Siddiqui denied packing them or knowing of their origin. She later suggested she copied them from a magazine, planned no terrorist acts, nor did her indictment claim them.
Hughes also said she “raised suspicions when she and her three children vanished in Pakistan in 2003.” She didn’t vanish. Her mother said she “left the family home in Gulshan-e-lqbal in a taxi on March 30, 2003 to catch a flight for Rawalpindi, but never reached the airport.” Pakistani intelligence agents abducted her, turned her over to US authorities, after which her long ordeal of secret imprisonment, interrogations, and years of brutalizing torture began, even though she wasn’t charged.
Her son Mohammed was later released on condition he say nothing. Her other two children, Maryam and Suleman, disappeared and may have been killed.
In May 2004, Pakistan’s Interior Minister confirmed she was turned over to US authorities in 2003 after no link between her and Al Qaeda was established. In 2006, Amnesty International called her one of many of the “disappeared” in America’s “war on terror.” In 2007, a Ghost Prisoner Human Rights Watch report suggested she was held in secret CIA detention.
In February 2008, the Asian Human Rights Commission said she was brought to Karachi and severely tortured to secure her compliance as a government witness against Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, related to Siddiqui through marriage to his nephew. He reportedly “gave her up” after capture on March 1, 2003, after which she and her children disappeared.
The charges were bogus and outrageous. Yet, on September 2, 2008, the Justice Department (DOJ) indicted her “on charges related to her attempted murder and assault of United States nationals and officers and employees.” According to Michael Garcia, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (in his same day press release):
On July 18, 2008, “a team of United States servicemen and law enforcement officers, and others assisting them, attempted to interview Aafia Siddiqui in Ghazni, Aghanistan, where she had been detained by local police the day before….unbeknownst to the United States interview team, unsecured, behind a curtain — Siddiqui obtained one of the United States Army’s M-4 rifles and attempted to fire it, and did fire it, at another United States Army officer and other members of the United States interview team….Siddiqui then assaualted one of the United States Army interpreters, as he attempted to obtain the M-4 rifle from her. Siddiqui subsequently assaulted one of the FBI agents and one of the United States Army officers, as they attempted to subdue her.”
Left unexplained was how this frail, weak, 110-pound woman, confronted by three US Army officers, two FBI agents, and two Army interpreters, inexplicably managed to assault three of them, get one of their rifles, open fire at close range, hit no one, and only she was severely wounded.
According to her attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp:
“how did this happen? And how did she get shot? I think you can answer that, can’t you (and question the outrageous charges against her)?”
During proceedings, another defense lawyer, Linda Moreno, said no forensic evidence proved the rifle Siddiqui allegedly used had been fired since no bullets, shell casings, or bullet debris were recovered and no bullet holes detected.
Garcia didn’t explain, nor about her abduction, torture and repeated raping at Bagram prison, Afghanistan where, as Prisoner 650, she was called the “Gray Lady of Bagram” because her screams were heard for years. Nor did he discuss her physical and emotional destruction. She was a pawn in America’s “war on terror,” used, abused, now convicted, and facing life in prison when sentenced, a victim of gross injustice.
Some Background
A Pakistani national, Siddiqui is deeply religious, attended MIT and Brandeis University where she earned a doctorate in neurocognitive science, married a Boston physician, raised money for charities, did volunteer work, distributed Korans to inmates in area prisons, and did nothing out of the ordinary. Yet the UK Times Online called her “Al-Qaeda woman.” For ABC News, she was “Mata Hari,” and the Justice Department targeted her as a terrorist, a woman guilty only of being Muslim in America at the wrong time.
When seized, the FBI said she was a potential “treasure trove” of information on terrorist suspects, sympathizers, or sleepers in America and overseas. CIA officer John Kiriakou called her “the most significant capture in five years,” and an unnamed counterterrorism official said she’s “a very dangerous person, no doubt about it.” FBI Director Robert Mueller said she’s “an Al Qaeda operative and facilitator.” He and the others lied.
Those who knew her recalled she was very small, quiet, polite, and shy, barely noticeable in a gathering. However, she’d say what was needed when necessary. Her fellow students described her as soft-spoken, studious, religious, but not extremist or fundamentalist. She taught Muslim children on Sundays, and was dedicated to helping oppressed Muslims worldwide. She spoke publicly, sent emails, gave slideshow presentations, and raised donations as part of her faith, activism, and sincerity. Yet she was targeted as “a high security risk” despite no evidence then or now to prove it.
Siddiqui is innocent of all charges, yet the DOJ claimed she was involved in biochemical warfare. In fact, she devised a computer program, enlisted adult volunteers to watch various objects move randomly across the screen, then reproduce what they recalled. The idea was to learn how well they retained information after viewing it on a computer. It had nothing to do with terrorism, biochemical warfare, or blowing up New York targets, charges never appearing in her indictment.
Siddiqui’s Trial and Conviction
Against her lawyers’ advice, she spoke publicly for the first time, despite the risk and her frail condition. She explained her academic work, her post-doctorate teaching, her interests that included studying the capabilities of dyslexic and other impaired children, then recounted her ordeal.
After being abducted, she agonized over the fate of her children. In US custody, the relevant incident leading to her indictment went as follows:
– at one point, she was tied down;
– then untied;
– left behind a curtain;
– peaked through it; and
– an American soldier shot her in the stomach;
– another in her side;
– then violently threw her to the floor unconscious.
She vaguely remembered being on a stretcher, placed in a helicopter, and getting a blood transfusion. She emphatically denied seizing and firing a weapon.
Under cross-examination, she said she was given the bag with incriminating documents, didn’t know its contents or whether handwriting on them was hers. She explained her repeated torture at Bagram, the effects of the strong medications given her, and at one point said, “If you were in a secret prison, or your children were tortured,” after which she was forcibly removed from court and the proceedings continued without her.
According to media reports, these revelations were “outbursts.” On January 25, New York Times writer CJ Hughes reported numerous “disruptions….plagu(ing) the trial. Monday (January 25) was hardly an exception. The defendant was ejected from (court) - not once, but twice (for) loudly proclaiming her innocence.” On January 19, she “had several outbursts in previous court appearances, raising questions about her competency to stand trial.”
On February 4, AP writer Tom Hays said “True to form, Aafia Siddiqui did not go quietly,” called her comments “combative,” then claimed the prosecution presented “compelling testimony.”
On February 5, the Islamophobic frontpagemag.com headlined “How a ‘Nice American Girl’ Became a Jihadist,” saying “veiled Muslim women can be very aggressive, murderously so.”
On February 3, the New York Daily News headlined, “Lady Al Qaeda Aafia Siddiqui convicted of attempted murder.” Writer Alison Gendar accepted DOJ’s charges as fact and added some of her own, saying:
“She grabbed a rifle at an ‘Afghan police station’ (she was at Bagram) and started shooting at the Americans sent to grill her. She was shot by the soldier whose weapon she swiped. (In 2008, she was) caught in ‘Afghanistan’ with ‘2 pounds of poisonous chemicals.’ (During the trial), she disrupted the proceedings several times with ’strange outbursts.’ ”
An August 22, 2008 Fox News report said “emails obtained by FOXNews.com show messages sent by Siddiqui (during her time at MIT) soliciting money for Al-Kifah Refugee Center - a known Al Queda charitable front tied to Usama bin Laden and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”
After a three week trial and two days of deliberation, a federal jury of eight women and four men convicted her on all charges, including attempted murder, armed assault, discharging a firearm during a violent crime, and assaulting US officers and employees. As a result, she potentially faces life in prison at her May 6 sentencing. It’s not confirmed, but her lawyers may appeal given the bogus charges, long detention, and brutalizing torture, leaving her a shell of her former self, so physically and emotionally shattered she was in no condition to stand trial.
After the verdict, aljazeera.net headlined “US verdict sparks Pakistan protests,” saying thousands in several cities rallied in her defense. Her relatives spoke publicly condemning the decision, her sister Fauzia saying “we’re proud to be related to her. America’s justice system, the establishment, the war on terror, the fraud of the war on terror, all of those things have shown their own ugly faces.”
Her mother, Ismat said “I did not expect anything better from an American court. We were ready for the shock and will continue our struggle to get her released.” Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman, Abdul Basit, said the government would try “to get her back to Pakistan and we would do everything possible and we’ll apply all possible tools in this regard.”
Al Jazeera’s Islamabad correspondent, Kamal Hyder, explained the public disappointment “for failing to find a diplomatic way out and getting (her) back home, because they feel she was innocent.” She was missing for five years like “many hundreds of (others who’ve) disappeared from Pakistan - still not accounted for - and now that Dr. Aafia’s case has come up, that’s likely to be a rallying point for the anti-American sentiment.”
The UK-based Cageprisoners spokesman, Asim Qureshi, said “The case of Aafia Siddiqui carries great significance in terms of the ability of the Obama administration to administer justice. Already we have seen a blanket refusal to look at the facts of her detention prior to 2008. This verdict will only confirm what many already believe, that it is impossible for Muslim terrorism suspects to receive a fair trial in the US.”
Defense lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp called the verdict unjust, in her opinion “based on fear….not fact,” and the result is the continued ordeal of an innocent woman facing a potential life sentence.
Carefully orchestrated, the trial proceeded like numerous others, targeting innocent victims because of their faith, ethnicity, prominence, benevolent charity, activism, or other reasons for political advantage, ending with convictions and punitive incarcerations against innocent defendants, guilty of being Muslims in America at the wrong time when we’re all just as vulnerable.
In a manipulated climate of fear, the same process repeats, using bogus charges, secret evidence, enlisted witnesses to cooperate, the defense prohibited from introducing exculpatory evidence, and proceedings carefully scripted to intimidate juries to convict.
Justice is again denied, Siddiqui another victim, a human tragedy, portrayed by the dominant media as a jihadist, and getting public sentiment to agree because disturbing truths are carefully suppressed.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
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Aafia is a typical Hijabi fundamentalist supported by the Jamat-i-Islami and the Taliban.
She had ties to Al-Qaeda. Based on evidence provided to the Musharraf Dictatorship she was handed over to the US by Paksitan government.
Suddenly the same person who was an Al-Qaeda sympathizer has become a daughter of the Brave this and that. Jamat -i-Islami and Mullah extremist types are exploiting her name to foment hatred of the United States.
If our people hate the USA so much then why accept AID. She is also a troublemaker. During her Jewry selection she intentionally tried to jeapardise her case by requesting that her Jewry should not include any Jews. She should know better that the American Judicial System is full of learned Jews.
Musharraf wouldn’t hand over someone just like that without evidence. We should extradite him from the UK to testify.
I do not think we should waste any time on this person. The two million dollars is better spent on the Swat poor.
Her fate is sealed by her own actions and the was sealed the day the Government of General Musharraf handed her over to the United States.
From Maududi to Aafia
Posted by Nadeem F. Paracha on 02 11th, 2010 | Comments (98)
From Maududi to Aafia
She’s being called the “daughter of the nation” who needs to be rescued from the fanged jaws of the Americans. Her name is Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Pakistani TV channels and drawing-rooms are buzzing with talk of this gallant woman who was recently found guilty by an American court for attempting murder, and on whose defence the government of Pakistan has already spent a whopping two million dollars.
On February 5, when Karachi became the horrid scene of two bomb attacks that killed dozens of men, women and children, leaders of various mainstream religious parties (especially the Jamaat-i-Islami) were marching up and down the roads and streets of Lahore condemning the American court’s verdict, insisting that Aafia was innocent, and demanding she be released and returned to Pakistan immediately. Not surprisingly, the Taliban followed suit.
A few days earlier, when TV channels were airing the shameful scenes of groups of lawyers outside the Lahore High Court cursing and abusing media men and the relatives of 12-year-old Shazia, who is said to have died at the hands of a senior lawyer and his family, these religious parties were behaving as if the young maid’s torturous death meant absolutely nothing compared to Aafia’s plight in the US.
Not a single rally or a word of condemnation in this respect slipped out from any of the many defenders of Aafia’s cause. Clearly, her champions are not bothered by the plight of those women who face humiliation and rape every day and then linger in a depressing wilderness and a psychological void. How come these women too are not the daughters of this immaculate bastion of faith called Pakistan?
What’s more, never have these highly vocal keepers of Aafia’s sanctity even superficially censured the aggravating antics of monsters like the Taliban and Al Qaeda at whose murderous hands thousands of innocent Pakistanis have lost their lives. None of the many women, children, and men who were mercilessly slaughtered by these monsters, it seems, were noble, good, or innocent enough to also be celebrated as the brothers, sisters, and children of this nation by the Aafia brigade.
In an excellent piece written by Anas Abbas on the issue, the writer rightly questions the validity of the vocal frenzy exhibited by the religious parties and their skewed mouthpieces in the popular mainstream media about the ‘insults’ that Aafia has supposed to have faced in custody.
Abbas is on the ball when, after pondering the Aafia fan club’s protests, he asks, “why did we not see this in the case of two other missing Pakistani women?” In other words, why such a hue and cry for a convicted felon and not a peep about women like Zarina Marri, who also went missing? Accused of harbouring Baloch nationalists, Marri was abducted by the Pakistan Army from Balochistan in 2005 and is believed to have been kept in an army torture cell in Karachi.
For that matter, why hasn’t the Aafia brigade previously taken up the case of Dr Shazia Khalid, a medical doctor and an employee of Pakistan Petroleum Limited, who was beaten and raped by Captain Hammad at Sui Hospital in 2005. She was then drugged and moved to a psychiatric hospital in Karachi. Later, she was put under house arrest and prevented from contacting lawyers, doctors and human rights officials. After her release, she managed to leave Pakistan after facing death threats.
For every single Aafia, there is a Zarina, Shazia and, of course, a Mukhtaran Mai – victims of either violent feudal traditions, untouchable establishmentarian arrogance, and the maddening forms of social hypocrisy that have been eating up the moral fabric of Pakistani society for decades now.
In the context of the unprecedented and highly subjective media attention that Aafia is getting in Pakistan, Abbas is absolutely right in asking: “Why was Shazia Khalid’s and Zarina Marri’s families never interviewed by Pakistani TV channels? Why was Shazia Khalid’s interview to the BBC never aired by the so called “free” Pakistani electronic media? Why have we not seen mass scale demonstrations in Pakistan for the justice for these two women? Why are pictures of Shazia Khalid not the highlight of every newspaper, TV channel and Pakistani activists’ blogs as pictures of Aafia are?”
The truth is, politico-religious parties and conservative flash-in-the-pans that have sprung up within the country’s electronic media and political spectrum, stand ideologically bankrupt, operating in a vicious vacuum created by the constant failure of Political Islam and ‘militant jihad’ to impose their own versions of ‘Islamic rule’ and revolution in the Muslim world.
Cleverly ignoring the brutality of an experiment gone wrong (i.e. state-sanctioned jihad and a lopsided, undemocratic mixing of religion and politics), these parties and individuals now concentrate on utilising all kinds of modern electronic and communication media.
Mainly using the internet, they bypass conventional political routes (where they have failed), and instead operate like large cyber fringe groups. But they have enough demagogic appeal to attract the commercial and ratings-hungry attention of the mainstream populist media (especially television).
They are likely to fare badly in an open (and real) democratic and political playing field, so keeping in mind the above-mentioned scenario, their constituencies cannot be found in the physical electoral geography of Pakistan. Instead, their constituencies lie in the nation’s drawing-rooms and cyber cafes.
Thus, unlike in the past when their agenda aimed to pressurise the state and schools of the country to impose their version of Islamic law and doctrine, today, these parties and individuals are reaching out to a cyber-savvy and TV-viewing audience through websites crackling with the most conspiratorial assumptions about Pakistan, Islam and their relation to the rest of the world.
The idea behind this (both directly and otherwise) is not all that new. It smacks of Abul ala Maududi and Syed Qutb’s insistence many years ago on the need to socially prepare and indoctrinate the society so it can be readily mobilised for that final ‘Islamic revolution.’
Whereas conventional Islamist organs like Jamaat-i-Islami and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood initially used university and college campuses and even the electoral dynamics of democracy for the above purpose, by the early 1980s, the JI, excited by the prospect of grabbing state power (when it was invited to join the Ziaul Haq dictatorship), short-circuited Maududi’s evolutionary Islamist mantra by encouraging Zia to implement Islamic laws and doctrines that were alien to Pakistan’s Islamic polity and traditions and thus began to mutate the society’s natural religious evolution.
Islamist terrorism today is clearly symbolic of the frustration the once heroically perceived ‘mujahideen’ and jihadis began to experience when, buoyed by the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan, they failed to convert other Muslim countries towards their brand of faith and jihad.
Interestingly, this failure and its violent consequences has seen the jihad brigade’s indirect spokespersons and sympathisers in cyber space and the media go back to the Maududdist drawing-board, that of initiating the Islamic revolutionary process on a social level, specifically through the media.
But the problem is, as mentioned before, the world-view being popularised by the sympathisers has already mutated Pakistan’s social evolution. In other words, instead of Pakistan’s social and cultural polity taking a natural and modern evolutionary course towards developing a collective democratic mindset that respects ethnic, religious and sectarian diversity and understands the elements that make a country develop a progressive relationship with other nations and peoples, the Islamist worldview has only managed to make the society collapse inwards, hiding from imaginary demons in the shape of ‘anti-Islam’ and ‘anti-Pakistan’ forces which are supposedly obsessed by the idea of destroying the country and its religion.
This is the mindset and worldview from which many Pakistanis are screening Aafia’s case. However, this worldview is blind to the fate of various Pakistani women who have suffered miserably at the hands of religious bigots, feudal lords and military regimes at home. Since Aafia’s image falls well within the precepts of this worldview (hijab-wearer, anti-America, Jew-hater, etc.), she is automatically raised to the status of being a cross between a heroine (a sort of Lady Saladin), and a helpless damsel in distress.
The truth is, if one is ready to face being socially ostracised by allowing himself to closely study the Aafia case objectively and without the crippling sight of the Islamist worldview, he is likely to concur with the American courts’ decision that, yes, Aafia was not innocent; at least not as innocent as her many sympathisers would have us believe.
For the opponenets of Musharraf,
The decisions and actions taken by Musharraf and his regime against Lal mosque terrorists and Akbar Bugti etc., were surely not to gain any personal gains but in the interest of Pakistan. This is enough to prove Musharraf’s integrity and loyality to his motherland.
As far as Aafia Siddiqui is concerned, she is a US citizen and her brother is still living in America enjoying all the privileges. America has every right to demand any country for expelling its citizens to US for whatever reasons; same way as Pakistan demanded US for expulsion of Admiral Mansoor ul Haq and now demanding Hamesh Khan of Punjab Bank (and he is due to arrive Pakistan).
Lastly the reference against CJOP was perfectly as per Pakistan Constitution. The irony is Chaudhry Iftikhar (the so called Champion of Justice) has stopped the trial against himself and yet he has to prove himself innocent against the alleged charges labelled in the judicial reference.
Yeb, every Jihadi to the rescue of Aafia.
Hypocrite Aafia supporters don’t have any respect or care for human rights.
From Maududi to Aafia
A few days earlier, when TV channels were airing the shameful scenes of groups of lawyers outside the Lahore High Court cursing and abusing media men and the relatives of 12-year-old Shazia, who is said to have died at the hands of a senior lawyer and his family, these religious parties were behaving as if the young maid’s torturous death meant absolutely nothing compared to Aafia’s plight in the US.
Not a single rally or a word of condemnation in this respect slipped out from any of the many defenders of Aafia’s cause. Clearly, her champions are not bothered by the plight of those women who face humiliation and rape every day and then linger in a depressing wilderness and a psychological void. How come these women too are not the daughters of this immaculate bastion of faith called Pakistan?
http://blog.dawn.com/2010/02/11/from-maududi-to-aafia/
Yeb, every Jihadi to the rescue of Aafia.
Hypocrite Aafia supporters don’t have any respect or care for human rights.
From Maududi to Aafia
A few days earlier, when TV channels were airing the shameful scenes of groups of lawyers outside the Lahore High Court cursing and abusing media men and the relatives of 12-year-old Shazia, who is said to have died at the hands of a senior lawyer and his family, these religious parties were behaving as if the young maid’s torturous death meant absolutely nothing compared to Aafia’s plight in the US.
Not a single rally or a word of condemnation in this respect slipped out from any of the many defenders of Aafia’s cause. Clearly, her champions are not bothered by the plight of those women who face humiliation and rape every day and then linger in a depressing wilderness and a psychological void. How come these women too are not the daughters of this immaculate bastion of faith called Pakistan?
Link: blog.dawn.com/2010/02/11/from-maududi-to-aafia/
Folks I’m really sorry, I know I have been acting like an a**hole.
concerned citizen…..stop it, I guess it’s enough now.
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