Who Is Dr Aafia Siddiqui & Why Did Algerian Kidnappers Demand Her Release?
22 January 2013
By Yvonne Ridley
THE only thing that surprised me when I heard that the
Algerian kidnappers had called for the release of Dr
Aafia Siddiqui was that it hadn't happened sooner.
Don't get me wrong, as a former hostage myself, there
is no way I condone the actions of what has unfolded
in a remote corner of the Algerian desert.
And my heart goes out to the families of those who
have lost loved ones in the unfolding drama at the In
Amenas gas plant siege said to have been masterminded
by Mohktar Belmokhtar. The infamous one-eyed Algerian
militant apparently with ties to al Qaida, has claimed
responsibility for launching Wednesday's attack.
It also goes without saying there is no way the
kidnappers, whether politically or criminally
motivated, can be justified in their actions.
But an injustice is an injustice, and as the only
western journalist to have specifically gone to
Afghanistan to investigate the case of Dr Aafia
Siddiqui, I have to say her plight has become a cause
cιlθbre around the Muslim world.
And I have an uncomfortable feeling that more and more
westerners will be kidnapped as their captors demand
the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a woman I once
called the most wronged in the world.
So just who is Dr Aafia Siddiqui and why is a group of
North Africans calling for her release?
Well it's very easy to get emotional about a wronged
Muslim woman caught up in the War on Terror but I am
not basing my case on emotion, just some simple, cold,
hard facts and forensic evidence
or lack of it, but
more of that and her bizarre story later.
Her family will certainly not be pleased that a group
of Algerian terrorists have called for her release
because it will give a perception in some quarters
that Dr Aafia must be an Islamic extremist. It's a
narrative pushed by US intelligence although it has to
be said in her trial the opening statement of the
prosecutor stated quite clearly that she was not al-Qaida
nor a terrorist sympathizer.
The case of the mother-of-three is well known in every
household in Pakistan from the most religious to the
most secular
the majority of which have been
demanding her repatriation for years. Now she is known
as the Daughter of the Nation, although her story has
traveled well beyond Pakistan's borders.
Thousands of Muslim children have been named after her
because of all that she has come to symbolize.
Everything that she represents stems from the
injustices created by America's War on Terror
the
kidnaps, renditions, torture, rape and waterboarding.
The brilliant academic, a neuroscientist, educated in
top US universities, is tonight languishing in a Texan
jail serving an 86 year sentence after being found
guilty of trying to kill American soldiers.
The fact they shot her at close range and nearly
killed her is often overlooked.
To their eternal shame, the US soldiers serving in
Afghanistan claimed in court under oath that the
diminutive, fragile academic leapt at them from behind
a prison cell curtain, snatching one of their guns to
shoot and kill them. It was a fabricated story that
any defense lawyer worth his or her salt would have
ripped apart at the seams.
The scenario painted in court was incredulous and more
importantly, the evidence non existent no gunshot
residue on her hands or clothes, no bullets from the
discharged gun, no fingerprints belonging to Dr Aafia
on the gun
other vital evidence removed by US
military from the scene went missing before the trial.
Come on, we've all seen episodes of CSI the science
doesn't lie.
After being patched up in a medical wing in Bagram,
she was then renditioned to America to stand trial for
an alleged crime committed in Afghanistan. Flouting
the Vienna and Geneva Conventions, she wasn't given
consular access until the day she made her first court
appearance.
The trial was held in New York, a stone's throw from
where the Twin Towers once stood making it impossible
not to invoke the memories of that horrific day on
September 11, which for some forever turned Muslims
into Public Enemy Number One.
A lack lustre legal team forced on Dr Aafia by the US
authorities failed to sway the jury of her innocence,
despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that she
could not have snatched a soldier's gun let alone pull
the trigger.
I went into the cell in Ghazni a few weeks after the
shooting in July 2008 and discovered that the soldiers
had panicked and sprayed the room with bullets as they
struggled to flee. The evidence is there on film shot
during my visit and handed over to the defense team.
The prosecutors could not believe a western journalist
had traveled to this part of Afghanistan and obtained
compelling witness and visual evidence. Soon after
that vital forensic evidence including spent bullets
that had been gouged out of a wall in the cell, went
missing.
Seeing Dr Aafia emerge unshackled and unhooded from
behind a curtain caused blind panic among the young
soldiers who had been briefed by the FBI they were
going to arrest one of the most dangerous women in the
world.
I interviewed eyewitnesses, senior Afghan police
officers and one after another told me their account
of what happened. Yet the only Afghan brought to court
to give testimony against her was the FBI's translator
who now has a green card and lives in New York with
his family.
What the jury was not told is that Dr Aafia, and her
three children, all aged six and under at the time,
had been kidnapped from a street near their home in
Karachi and disappeared from 2003.
The FBI put out a story at the time that she had in
fact gone on a jihad to Afghanistan it was a
ludicrous tale without foundation and, as every mother
of young children knows, a journey to the local corner
shop with toddlers is a monumental challenge so
heading off to fight in Afghanistan with a pram,
pushchair and toddler in hand is simply inconceivable.
The FBI narrative was destroyed by Boston-based Elaine
Whitfield Sharp, a lawyer hired by the Siddiqui family
when Dr Aafia first disappeared.
The missing years of the academic's life reveal a
story which is now known to virtually everyone in the
Muslim world where she is widely regarded as a victim
of George W Bush's War on Terror.
As she tried to tell the jury how she was held in
secret prisons, with no legal representation, cut off
from the outside world since 2003 where brutal
interrogation techniques were used to break her down,
she was silenced by the judge who said he was only
interested in the cell shooting incident.
Judge Richard Berman, a modest little man with much to
be modest about, insisted he was not interested in the
missing years; it had no relevance to the case he
insisted.
She testified that after completing her doctorate
studies she taught in a school, and that her interest
was in cultivating the capabilities of dyslexic and
other special needs children. She emerged as a
humanity-loving nurturer and educator, the gentle yet
resolute seeker for truth and justice.
As the evidence continued we learned that she didn't
know where her three children were it was
sensational content for those who knew the real story.
She talked of her dread and fear of being handed back
to the Americans when she was arrested in Ghazni and
was held by police.
Terrified that yet another secret prison was waiting
for her she revealed how she peeked through the
curtain divider into the part of the room where
Afghans and Americans were talking, and how when a
startled American soldier noticed her, he jumped up
and yelled that the prisoner was loose, and shot her
in the stomach. She described how she was also shot in
the side by a second person. She also described how
after falling back onto the bed in the room, she was
violently thrown to the floor and lost consciousness.
This ties in exactly with what I was told by the
counter terrorism police chief I interviewed in
Afghanistan back in the autumn of 2008 I remember
him laughing as he told me how the US soldiers
panicked, shot randomly in the air as they stampeded
out of the room in a blind panic.
Of course there's no way a bunch of soldiers are going
to admit they lost it, but according to those I
interviewed for my film In search of Prisoner 650 in
Afghanistan that's exactly what happened.
Two of her missing children have since been found and
reunited with their extended family in Karachi. It is
still not clear where the children were held when they
were snatched from a street in Karachi but there's no
disguising their American accents
possibly picked up
from their jailers.
So why did the FBI want to speak to Dr Aafia in the
first place and why did they portray her as a
dangerous terrorist on the run? if she was the person
they painted why wasn't she charged with terrorism
offences and why was the prosecutor at pains to point
out that she was not al Qaida?
One person who might hold the key is Dr Aafia's
ex-husband who has resisted attempts to be interviewed
by me. He was going through a very combative and
bitter divorce in the months before she disappeared.
He first came to the attention of the FBI in 2002 when
he was living in America but what he told them that
would lead them to suspect his ex-wife of wrongdoing
is anyone's guess.
Who snatched Dr Aafia and her children? I don't know,
but I have also tracked down several ex-Bagram
detainees who told me they saw Dr Aafia being held in
Bagram in 2005 and gave a positive identity of her by
photographs before her kidnap and after her arrest in
Ghazni.
The bottom line is Dr Aafia Siddiqui should not be in
prison and as long as this injustice continues she
will become a rallying call for anyone who wants to
pick a fight with America.
Acknowledging the injustice and returning Dr Aafia to
her home in Pakistan will not stop extremists from
causing terror, but it might make the lives of US
citizens a lot safer if this wrong is put to right.
* British journalist Yvonne Ridley is a patron of
Cageprisoners as well as being the European President
of the International Muslim Women's Union and the Vice
President of the European Muslim League.
I, Mauri' Saalakhan, agree 100 percent with what my
sister has said!
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