SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
On a hot summer morning in 2008 a team of four Americans – two FBI agents and two army officers – rolled into Ghazni, a dusty town 50 miles south of Kabul. They had come to interview two unusual prisoners: a woman in a burka and her 11-year-old son, arrested the day before. Afghan police accused the mysterious pair of being suicide bombers. What interested the Americans, though, was what they were carrying: notes about a “mass casualty attack” in the US on targets including the Statue of Liberty and a collection of jars and bottles containing “chemical and gel substances”. The woman is Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three. The description of the shooting, in July 2008, comes from the prosecution case, which Siddiqui disputes. . Dr. Siddiqui is an MIT and Brandeis University educated neuro scientist who has been called everything from Prisoner 650 to Lady Al-Qaeda after being captured in 2003 and imprisoned in Afghanistan at what many believe was one of America’s torture chambers.
She was released in 2008 with what she says was a bag that her captors gave her that contained U.S. maps and bomb making materials. Moments later she was arrested. During her interrogation she was accused of grabbing a rifle and firing. She was charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. She was subsequently brought back to the United States and put on trial in a federal courthouse in New York City (2010). Found guilty of ‘attempting to murder U.S. personnel’ in Afghanistan (despite all of the evidence proving otherwise), she was given a sentence of 86 YEARS (Life without the possibility of parole).
There had been much hue and cry in Pakistan for the release of Aafia Siddiqui but Government despite promises failed to bring her back. Calling Dr Aafia Siddiqui the most important political prisoner of the present world, a US lawyer wonders why the Pakistan government is not officially seeking her repatriation. Renowned US lawyer Stephen Downs along with Dr Aafia’s sister Dr Fowzia told a press conference here on Tuesday that a new study carried out in the USA found that 94pc of those held in connection with terrorism cases after 9/11 were unfairly prosecuted and Dr Aafia was at No 2 in the list. Aafia’s lawyer claimed that “There were many ways that Aafia could be repatriated but first Pakistan had to officially demand her return, which surprisingly the government has still not done”. Pakistan is the colony of US, the saga of Rymand Davis, made it clear that US can do whatever it wants while Aafi’s crime was not that serious than Rymand Davis but it is very rightly said that beggars cannot be choosers.
pakistan.shafaqna.com
