The plight of prisoner No. 650 (Dr. Afia Siddiqui)

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

After intensive civil rights groups pressure and angry protests in Pakistan, the US authorities have formally acknowledged arresting Dr. Afia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi with her three teen age kids.

On August 5, the FBI suddenly produced Dr. Siddiqui in a New York court to charge her with possessing documents including recipes for explosives and chemical weapons and description of New York land marks plus firing two shots at a US army captain which, very conveniently, missed.

But the story of the circumstances, the timing and the place from where she had been picked up that the Americans purveyed for the world to believe hardly sounds credible.

According to the charge sheet, Dr Siddiqui was loitering outside the compound of Ghazni Governor in Afghanistan on July 17 this year when she was taken into custody and had in her possession numerous documents on making explosives, chemical weapons and other weapons involving biological material and neurological agents. Then while under detention at the notorious Bagram airbase cell she shot at American officials after getting hold of a rifle of one of them.

Tellingly, the story of the Afghan police in Ghazni contradicts the FBI charge sheet. The Afghan police said officers searched Siddiqui after reports of her suspicious behavior and found maps of Ghazni, including one of the governor's house, and arrested her along with a teenage boy. US troops requested the woman be handed over to them but the police refused. US soldiers then disarmed the Afghan police, at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police. The US troops thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and took her.

According to the New York Times, the United States intelligence agencies have said that she had links to at least 2 of the 14 men suspected of being high-level members of Al Qaeda who were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2006. The charges against her, however, do not appear to be related to those allegations, but to her assault on the Americans who were about to question her.

The hearing cleared up none of the mysteries that have surrounded Ms. Siddiqui's case since she disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents' home in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003.

Dr. Afia's bail application has been rejected and if recent court cases against the Muslims have any resonation, it appears that the FBI will try to keep her behind the bars indefinitely even if she is acquitted by a jury.

More than two and half years, after failing to convict Palestinian activist and a former professor of South Florida University, Dr. Sami al-Arian, before a Florida jury, the government has continued to use all means to prolong his confinement. Dr. al-Arian has completed his nearly five-year prison term but remains in custody. Only three weeks before his scheduled release date of April 7, 2008 he was informed on March 19 that he would be called to testify before a third grand jury in Virginia. On June 25, 2008, he was indicted on two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury. On July 10, at a bail hearing at Alexandria, Virginia, Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered Dr. Sami Al-Arian, released but he remained in prison since the judge refused to block immigration authorities from detaining him as a prelude to his deportation.

Similarly, in November 2007, Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a Palestinian-American and former professor at Washington's Howard University, was sentenced to more than 11 years imprisonment for refusing to testify before a grand jury looking into possible terror financing in the Middle East. Tellingly, in February 2007 Dr. Ashqar was acquitted of all terror-related charges.

The twisted story of Dr. Afia's arrest is one of the strangest since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Pakistan's leading newspaper The Nation may be right when it says: "If a PhD from Brandeis (Harvard) in behavioral neuroscience needs to keep documents in front of her to make explosives, it must be a very poor standard of education. And if GIs can pass on guns to 'dangerous criminals' in custody, the superpower needs to have better trained, tougher soldiers to keep its global overlordship. It seems secret agents everywhere are adept at fabricating charges that cannot bear scrutiny."

It will not be too much to say that the insinuation, that she had been hiding herself since 2003, is a travesty of the truth and an affront to people's common sense. Dr Aafia's case is a reminder of the grave injustice done to many people in the US detention facilities in Bagram in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and elsewhere.

Misuse of US judicial system

Dr. Afia's bail application has been rejected and if recent court cases against the Muslims have any resonation, it appears that the FBI will try to keep her behind the bars indefinitely even if she is acquitted by a jury.

More than two and half years, after failing to convict Palestinian activist and a former professor of South Florida University, Dr. Sami al-Arian, before a Florida jury, the government has continued to use all means to prolong his confinement. Dr. al-Arian has completed his nearly five-year prison term but remains in custody. Only three weeks before his scheduled release date of April 7, 2008 he was informed on March 19 that he would be called to testify before a third grand jury in Virginia. On June 25, 2008, he was indicted on two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury. On July 10, at a bail hearing at Alexandria, Virginia, Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered Dr. Sami Al-Arian, released but he remained in prison since the judge refused to block immigration authorities from detaining him as a prelude to his deportation.

Similarly, in November 2007, Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a Palestinian-American and former professor at Washington's Howard University, was sentenced to more than 11 years imprisonment for refusing to testify before a grand jury looking into possible terror financing in the Middle East. Tellingly, in February 2007 Dr. Ashqar was acquitted of all terror-related charges.

The twisted story of Dr. Afia's arrest is one of the strangest since the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Pakistan's leading newspaper The Nation may be right when it says: "If a PhD from Brandeis (Harvard) in behavioral neuroscience needs to keep documents in front of her to make explosives, it must be a very poor standard of education. And if GIs can pass on guns to 'dangerous criminals' in custody, the superpower needs to have better trained, tougher soldiers to keep its global overlordship. It seems secret agents everywhere are adept at fabricating charges that cannot bear scrutiny."

It will not be too much to say that the insinuation, that she had been hiding herself since 2003, is a travesty of the truth and an affront to people's common sense. Dr Aafia's case is a reminder of the grave injustice done to many people in the US detention facilities in Bagram in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and elsewhere.

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Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective:  www.amperspective.com  Email: asghazali@gmail.com