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Aafia Siddiqui Update

By Alexa

Some background here on the strange and horrifying story of imprisoned Dr. Aafia, but the disappearance of her husband and three children is still very much a developing story. Cage Prisoners has much more information.

What do I mean by "developing" story? The facts are in dispute and involve the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Outside the U.S., Dr. Aafia is huge international news. More than one reporter has referred to this woman's experience as the greatest individual human rights scandal of our time.

I think this may prove to be correct, except it's not an individual per se. It's Dr. Aafia, her husband, Ammar Al Balochi, now believed to be detained as a high value target (HVT) at Guantanamo, and their three children, the oldest of whom, a boy of 12 years, was recently confirmed as having been held as a ghost detainee by the United States for five years. There are two other chidren, ages 9 and 5.
This morning, Reuters reports that the 12 year old child has been remanded to the custody of Pakistan via "the Karzai government of Afghanistan."

I'm not sure exactly what has taken place here with the 12 year old boy, whose name is Ahmed, not Ali Hassan. Ali Hassan has denied that Aafia is his mother.

I must ask your patience here, gente. This is one extremely tangled web of deception, and I realize it reads like something from Clint Eastwood's forthcoming film The Changeling.

Ahmed, the 11-year-old boy said to have been apprehended with Aafia Siddiqui in Ghazni last July in the official Afghan compound, was identified as her son on Friday, although he denies that he is in any way related to her.

Ahmed, who remains in Afghan or United States custody in Afghanistan, told those who questioned him that he was an Afghan and not Aafia Siddiqui's son.

According to reliable sources that wish to remain anonymous, when asked to give details of his Afghan family, Ahmed was unable to do so.

Daily Times - Pakistan

Where is Ahmed Siddiqui and where has he been? I have no explanation as to how this child in US custody as a ghost detainee since age 7, was apparently handed off to Afghanistan, when or why.

Besides the question of where Siddiqui herself has been all of the years, an even more pressing question is where are her children?

To date, the whereabouts of the two youngest children - who should now be about 5 and 10 years old - are unknown. But Siddiqui's oldest son, Ahmed, an 11-year-old with American citizenship, is in Afghan custody.

Joanne Mariner, Counterpunch.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui's story has been haunting most Pakistanis for months now. Famously known as "Prisoner 650" at Bagram Base in Afghanistan, she is one of the missing persons of Pakistan, wanted by the FBI on alleged links with Al Qaeda.

A highly educated researcher who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and where she obtained her PhD in genetics, Dr Siddiqui mysteriously disappeared from Karachi in March 2003 along with her three children. Since then, US and Pakistani officials have continuously denied any knowledge about her.

A particularly disturbing part of this story is that the fate of her children, aged between one month and seven years at the time of her kidnapping, is still unknown. As I write this, there is no clarification at all. There is more than speculation to suggest that the child Ali Hassan remanded to Pakistan an hour ago doesn't know Dr. Aafia and isn't her son.

Whose child then is Ali Hassan? And where is Ahmed Siddiqui? Where are his younger siblings?

Lord Nazir Ahmed of Britain's House of Lords asked questions in Parliament about Dr Siddiqui. And it was on July 6, 2008, when British journalist Yvonne Ridley called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans at Bagram in Afghanistan for over four years. "I call her the 'grey lady' because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her. This would never happen to a Western woman," she said at a press conference in Islamabad.

Ms. Ridley, who came to Pakistan to appeal for help, said the case came to her attention when she read the book Enemy Combatant by a former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg. After being seized in February 2002 in Islamabad, Mr. Begg was held in detention centres in Kandahar and Bagram for about a year before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. He recounted his experiences in the book after his release in 2005.

After these reports in the media, the US and Pakistani authorities were forced to admit just last week that Dr Siddiqui was indeed in US captivity. According to her attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, "a lot of the allegations are implausible."

On Aug 5 she appeared before a US federal court in New York where she was charged with attempted murder and assault of a US government officer and US employees, counts which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years each. Afghan authorities said that they had arrested her outside the Ghazni governor's compound and that they also they found bomb-making instructions, excerpts from the "Anarchist's Arsenal," papers with descriptions of US landmarks among other things from her purse.

Dr Siddiqui's sister Fauzia said at a press conference in Karachi on Tuesday that the government of Pakistan and all religious, political parties and human rights organisations should play a role in bringing her sister back home. At least the children should be immediately handed over to the family as no law on earth allows a government to hold innocent children.

I don't know if Dr Siddiqui has done anything illegal or not but the way she has been picked and handed over to US authorities along with three innocent children is a violation of basic human rights and human dignity. What happened to moral values, respect for law and human rights? If she has done something wrong, she should have been held accountable in the court of law and punished. But why detain her illegally, along with three children, for five years?

As I mentioned, this story is huge international news and many of the facts presented are in question.

To detain the children of suspects is, of course, a devastatingly cruel psychological torture for the mother. This is an old and very effective method of torture, practiced famously in Iran among other places.

And the status and whereabouts of all three children are still very much open to question this morning. The convenient exchange of a Pakistani boy who doesn't appear to know Dr. Aafia, and was held under US secret detention in Afghanistan, further complicates the situation.

If the release of Ali Hassan was meant to placate Pakistan, bad move, Cap'n. Ali Hassan does not appear to be Dr. Aafia's child. And exactly how did the the Karzai regime of Afghanistan come to rather conviently locate and remand custody of a child who was in US custody just two weeks ago?

So many conflicting reports. So much we simply do not know.

But I fully believe that it's easy for some to mistreat an entity called Prisoner 650. Easy to disappear this prisoner's entire family. Easy to torture Prisoner 650, both physically (she has very serious injuries), and psychologically (as the Grey Lady of Bagram refused food in a state of panic that her children were being starved. The Pakistani Spectator.

To disappear Dr. Aafia for five years, repeatedly torture and rape her at Bagram AFB, to use her young children as instruments of psychological torture against her, almost requires profound dehumanization and a distinction of something less than human.

 

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).