KARACHI - "For you it's just another story. If you want the truth go to Ghazni
where you will get more than I can ever tell you about my sister," said a
distraught Fouzia Siddiqi, speaking in a voice breaking with helpless
desperation.
Fouzia's younger sister, Aafia Siddiqi, 35, made headlines after the US Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced on August 4 her "arrest" for attempting
to "murder and assault" United States officers and employees outside the
governor's office in Ghazni, Afghanistan, on July 17. No soldiers were reported
injured in the incident but Aafia received bullet wounds.
Aafia, a neuroscientist, has since been lodged in a Manhattan jail
and the preliminary hearing of her case is set for September 3. According to
charges against her in a New York court, she was, at the time of her arrest,
found carrying documents describing how to make explosives and chemical,
biological and radiological weapons. She allegedly also had a list of landmarks
in the US and "chemical substances" in sealed containers.
Aafia's resurfacing in Ghazni, five years after her disappearance in the
southern port city of Karachi, has shaken the nation. The whereabouts of her
three children, who were with her at the time she was kidnapped, remain
unclear.
Aafia's story began in March 2003 when this Pakistani woman, then 30, along
with her three children, then aged between four months and seven years, became
one more victim of numerous disappearances that have been linked to Pakistan's
role in the US-led "war-on-terror". The independent Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan (HRCP) has stated that she was initially picked up by an intelligence
agency in Pakistan and so the "Pakistan government is also accountable for the
crime".
The handing over of Aafia to US authorities has been criticized by Pakistani
political leaders. "This is not only a heinous act, but tantamount to selling
the country's sovereignty and independence to another nation. It is shameful,
utterly humiliating to every Pakistani," said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the
Jamaat-e-Islami party at a press conference in Karachi last week.
"It is high time that the present government act like an independent sovereign
nation and form its own foreign policy, leaving behind the legacy of a
discredited military dictator," Ahmed stressed, referring to Pervez Musharraf
who resigned as president on Monday, amid criticism at home of his pro-US
policies.
In 2004, former FBI director Robert Mueller named Aafia among the seven
al-Qaeda associates who were being sought in connection with possible terrorist
threats to the US.
Two weeks prior to Aafia's arrest in Ghazni, a British journalist, Yvonne
Ridley, held a press conference in Islamabad, in which she identified Aafia as
"Prisoner No 650", being held in solitary confinement at the detention center
attached to the US air base at Bagram.
Ridley referred to the book Enemy Combatant by Moazzam Beg, a former
Guantanamo and Bagram prisoner, who had mentioned hearing endless screams,
apparently by a woman being tortured, during his detention at Bagram.
"Based on the testimony of detainees held in Bagram in 2003 and 2004, it is
clear that there was a woman being held at the base. Whether or not that woman
was Aafia Siddiqi is something that, at the moment, cannot be verified," said
Asim Qureshi, senior researcher with the rights group Cageprisoners. "However,
Dr Siddiqi has confirmed that she was held in Bagram for years," said Qureshi,
responding to queries from Inter Press Service (IPS) .
Fouzia describes her sister, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
Brandeis University alumna, as a "fun-loving people's person", who had
completed her PhD on "how to improve memory among mentally challenged
children".
"I fear for her life. They probably don't want her to see the light of day,"
said Fouzia. "If they release her, the truth will come out."
A press release by the HRCP says: "A close look at the picture [in newspapers
in Pakistan] shows the years of torture - dark circles under her eyes, a broken
and badly fixed nose, made-up teeth and crumbled lips. It is a picture of a
severely dehydrated and unwell person, almost as if on the deathbed. It shows
the inhumane brutality of a 'civilized' nation by the administration of the
country which claims to be civilized."
According to the description given to Fouzia by her brother, a Houston-based
architect, who was allowed to meet Aafia in New York, she was in a "fragile
condition and in severe pain".
"She was suffering from multiple bullet wounds that had been not been attended
to. She came to court in a wheelchair and was suffering from intense abdominal
pain for which she was given aspirin, which could only act as poison for her
ulcerous condition," Fouzia said. Aafia had earlier informed her lawyer that
she believed part of her intestines had been removed.
"My brother told me he saw the perpetrators and the victim together in one
room. There was not a shred of compassion, just stony-eyed hate," Fouzia said,
tears welling up in her eyes. "She has been condemned even before the trial."
"You know, it would have been better if she had died. I believed she had died
and was reconciled to the idea. That way I could move on ... and then she
re-surfaced, like resurrected from the dead, and that brought some hope. But
seeing her like this, it just breaks my heart," continued Fouzia.
Since the announcement of her arrest there have been protests from rights
groups across Pakistan.
Amina Janjua, who has been leading a campaign for the recovery of almost 400
missing persons, as chairperson of Defense of the Human Rights, formed after
her husband was kidnapped three years ago said she could feel the anguish and
utter helplessness of Aafia's family.
"After seeing Aafia's pictures splashed in newspapers across the country and
the torture marks she bore for five years, I fear for my husband's life too,"
Janjua said. "But being a woman, and a mother whose children have been
separated from her, I can feel the torment she's going through."
"To say that she [Aafia] had been taken into custody only on July 17, 2008, is
a blatant lie, as transparently ugly as any falsehood can be. The insinuation,
that she had been hiding herself since 2003, is a travesty of truth, an affront
to people's commonsense," stated the HRCP.
But Aafia's case seems to be shrouded in mystery and no one is able to piece
together the puzzle of her disappearance and reappearance. This has made it
difficult for rights groups to bring up her case.
Her sister refuses to divulge information about her husband. And if there is a
husband, he has not made any statement so far.
US officials have said that she was married a second time to a nephew of
September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. This has been fiercely disputed
by the HRCP.
Zaid Hamid, a defense consultant heading the Islamabad-based think-tank
Brasstacks, does not see any mystery about Aafia's case except for the
"criminal betrayals and the deafening silence of our government, media and
civil society about all Guantanamo prisoners, especially Pakistanis".
"We consider Dr Aafia's case an instance of utterly unconscionable and most
brutal form of attack on a human being's individual rights," says I A Rehman,
head of the HRCP.
Asked why the commission was silent all these years, Rehman said: "The HRCP had
been calling for her recovery since 2003, and when it went to the Supreme Court
in 2007 her name was high on the list. The only mystery was the silence of
Aafia's family."
But the silence, explains Hamid, is due to the threats faced by families in
similar circumstance. This was confirmed by Fouzia who said "all these years we
were told by various government people that she was alright and is well and not
to probe too much or harm would come to her".
In 2005, Arifa, 18, and her sister Habiba, 20, both from Karachi, were arrested
in the northern Pakistani town of Swat. Their father, Sher Mohammad Baloch,
filed a petition in the High Court and the HRCP took up their case. They were
released after a year but HRCP was told by their father that their lips were
sealed.
The government, under intense pressure from an incensed nation, has sought
consular access to Aafia. As a first active step, two diplomats have visited
Siddiqi and the media reported that she requested a copy of the Koran,
religiously appropriate food and assurances of a fair trial.
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