Yesterday, a US federal court postponed Aafia Siddiqui’s bail hearing until Sept 3. This is a huge story in Pakistan and it's generated enormous amounts of ill-will against the Unites States. (As if there wasn't enough already....) Allegations that the U.S. has detained Siddiqui at the Bagram base in Afghanistan and subjected her to "five years of continuous rape and torture" (per Yvonne Ridley and Caged Prisoners) are assumed to be true by many Pakistanis, not just the "rage boys" and their niqabbed female counterparts. Lots of Pakistan's intelligentsia and legal types believe it too, along with many millions of Muslims around the world. Conspiracy theories get a enthusiastic audience in Pakistan and with the world's radical leftists.
Personally, I don't believe that my government has done this. They may keep things secret during what is essentially a long war, but in my heart, I don't believe that the U.S. government or military detained and tortured Siddiqui. The fact that Caged Prisoners (reportedly an Al Qaeda organization) has generated so much hatred and anti-American feeling from this allegation in only a few short weeks convinces me even more that this is a fabrication. It's worked very well for them, as they seek to incite more anti-American sentiment, Islamist activity and chaos in Pakistan. One might think it was a sort of campaign, in fact. Siddiqui's "capture" came about a week after Ridley's press conference. Neither Caged Prisoners nor Siddiqui's family has offered a shred of evidence for their claims. What generates more sympathy than the figure of a small, weak woman who was allegedlt abused by the United States? Good thing that bullet only wounded her and didn't kill her.
Thank goodness there will be a trial. Now we have a prayer of finding out who's lying and who's telling the truth, and where Siddiqui has been, and where her children are.
The Boston Globe covered the story today, here are a few excerpts:
"... yesterday, federal prosecutors in New York alleged that Siddiqui's activism had become extremism. US officials say that the 36-year-old mother of three became an Al Qaeda operative who ended up in Afghanistan and attacked US soldiers who had come to interrogate her."
"...Intelligence officials believe that Siddiqui, considered the world's most-wanted female before her arrest, became affiliated with Al Qaeda while in Boston. Though the FBI had sought her in 2003, she returned to her native Pakistan with her children and went underground before agents found her, according to interviews with US officials and documents from the FBI and the director of national intelligence."
"US officials say she eluded them until last month when she was arrested with an unidentified teenage boy in Ghazni, Afghanistan. Local police caught the two outside the provincial governor's compound with chemicals, maps, and documents on explosives, according to court papers."
" 'They were here for suicide bombing,' an Afghan official in Ghazni told the Globe in a telephone interview last week. 'Both of them were looking like they were prepared for suicide.' "
The Boston Globe article presents an overview of her life, especially the years spent in the Boston area. Some of the suspicion-raising activities of Siddiqui:
"Around the time she graduated from MIT in 1995, Siddiqui married Muhammad Khan, an anesthesiologist from Karachi who became a resident at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. At first, the couple seemed happy, hosting friends for meals in their apartment on St. Alphonsus Street in Roxbury."
"Shortly after her marriage, Siddiqui gave birth to a son and bore a daughter, Maram Bint Muhammad, in September 1998 at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center. But the arranged marriage soured within a few years when Khan disapproved of his wife's activism, according to a 2005 Vogue Magazine profile titled, 'The Most Wanted Woman in the World.' "
In the spring of 2002, months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, FBI agents questioned the couple about their purchase of night-vision goggles, body armor, and military instruction manuals, according to Sharp. Months later, the family returned to Pakistan, where Siddiqui and Khan divorced just before the birth of their third child, according to Sharp."
"Siddiqui then married an Al Qaeda operative known as Ammar al-Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to documents from the director of national intelligence."
"In March 2003, Mohammed was arrested in a predawn raid in Islamabad. He and Baluchi were held for years in secret US detention and are now awaiting trial at Guantanamo Bay. Within weeks of Mohammed's arrest, Siddiqui's photo appeared on the FBI website as a person wanted for questioning."
At that time, she disappeared in Pakistan, last seen getting into a taxi with her kids in in Karachi.
"With her whereabouts unknown, sketchy reports in Pakistani papers suggested that she had been arrested in Pakistan and was turned over to the Americans, prompting anti-US protests in Pakistan. Amnesty International listed Siddiqui as possibly among the 'ghost prisoners' held in secret by the US government. Her anguished mother traveled to the United States in search of clues."
"But yesterday, US officials vehemently denied that Siddiqui had been in American custody until her recent arrest."
"Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, called the allegations 'absolutely baseless and false.' A CIA spokesman also denied that she had been detained."
" 'For several years, we have had no information regarding her whereabouts whatsoever,' said Gregory Sullivan, a State Department spokesman on South Asian affairs. 'It is our belief that she . . . has all this time been concealed from the public view by her own choosing.' "
Call me a naive bunny, but I believe the feds' word over tjhat of Affia, her sister Fowzia, Yvonne Ridely or Moazzam Begg. The Jawa Report reports on the reliability of the Ridely/Begg allegations here. Previous blog postings on Aafia Siddiqui here (scroll down).
Comments