The Pakistani Spectator

According to the media reports, On Thursday, an FBI official visited Aafia Siddiqi’s brother in Houston, USA to deliver the news that she was alive and in custody. FBI further told the brother of Aafia, that she is alive, though injured and is in Afghanistan.

Dr. Aafia has become one of the rare case of in the strictly forbidden war on terror. She is an Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-trained Pakistani neuroscientist, accused of belonging to an al-Qaeda cell based in Boston, and according to the FBI she is one of the top wanted accomplice of 9/11. FBI also says that Dr. Aafia had close links with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks and also was married to Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, an alleged al-Qaeda accomplice, who intended to blow up gas stations and poison water reservoirs in the United States.

For some months, people like Imran Khan and other human rights activists were accusing Pakistan and US authorities that they had captured Dr. Aafia from Karachi and had shifted her to Afghanistan. Imran Khan also said that she was detained at the Bagram airbase where she was being tortured and due to her late night cries, she was known as the “Ghost of Bagram” among the other prisoners.

The pressure has mounted in the recent days upon the authorities to reveal the whereabouts of the Dr. Aafia. But the thing is that when exactly US authorities have bowed down in front of pressures from any side regarding the war on terror? The way FBI has disclosed limitedly about Dr. Aafia has left more questions, then answering any of the previous ones.