June 4, 2013
FORT WORTH: Last week, Dr. Aafia who is detained at Carswell Prison at a US Military base in Fort Worth, United States was physically assaulted in her prison cell and left unconscious and bleeding.  She eventually received medical care after two days and intervention by her lawyer, Ms. Tina Foster.  Dr. Aafia was visited by her lawyer within days of the incident and is now in better condition.  The Pakistani consulate in Texas also sent a high level team to visit Dr. Aafia.
She has still not been able to visit with family members. The last family visit was over a year ago.

This latest "incident" underscores the need for independent medical treatment of Dr. Aafia that is outside of the prison system. It also further highlights the urgent need for her repatriation to Pakistan where she may serve out her sentence and the governments can avoid the diplomatic problems that arise from incidents of this type.

Carswell prison claims it is conducting an "internal investigation into the incident". The findings will likely remain secret.

Lunar Eclipse
The Aafia Siddiqui Story
by JUDY BELLO

April 11, 2011

The article is available in its full version on CounterPunch.org

Below are some excerpts...

A woman finds herself alone on the street in an unfamiliar neighborhood of an unfamiliar city. The people around her don’t speak her native language, and in fact, she doesn’t understand their language.  She is accompanied by a 12 year old boy, Ali. She doesn’t recognize him, but she has a great affection for children, and he is in her care. He will later be identified as her son, Ahmed whom she has not seen in the 5 years since they were abducted from a taxi in Karachi not far from their home.  She doesn’t know  how she got there, and she isn’t entirely sure why she is there. Small and slender, no more than 110 lbs, he seems fragile, a little disoriented, out of place. She will later say that she was looking for her husband, or another time, that she was looking for a particular woman. It’s possible she really doesn’t know why she is there.  She hears the Muezzin’s call and begins to move towards the mosque. Perhaps she will find a refuge there.

The Afghan police in Ghazni notice a woman on the street. Something draws their attention to her.  She doesn’t appear to belong to the place. Perhaps she isn’t dressed in the local style. She is on the street in the early afternoon on a Friday when most men are at the Mosque and women are in their homes. The Police say she seemed out of place, lost. The police would later say that she was loitering after dark, but among the court documents, there is an interview with the shopkeeper in front of whose store she was detained. He says that he wasn’t in the store because it was Friday, he was attending the prayer service at the Mosque.  It would have been between 1 pm and 3:30 pm. He swears the woman is a stranger and he has never seen her before.....

.... This terrible story is like something out of a nightmare, or a bad novel. But it is a true story, in so far as you can find the truth of events that are disputed and cloaked in the secrecy of multiple ‘security operations’. At least it is part of the story of the ordeal of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman, born into an upper middle class family with conservative religious values, who placed a high value on education and on service. It is a part of the story of a young woman who came to the US, initially to Texas, later to Massachusetts to attend various colleges, eventually achieving a degree in ‘Neuroscience’, though she was did not enjoy biology and chemistry but preferred the study of psychology and education. In fact she had prepared for a career teaching developmentally disabled children.[3]...

...Aafia Siddiqui had lived in the US for more than 10 years, married here and borne her children here. She carried the family standard as she engaged in teaching and preaching Islam as the clearest and brightest truth and supporting Muslim Charities in war zones like Croatia and later, Afghanistan; sending Qur’ans to prisoners and teaching children at an impoverished inner city mosque. But something has gone terribly wrong to bring our heroine her to this terrible pass. And it will only get worse.

Returning to the present story, common sense would indicate it would have been very difficult for this small battered woman to have lifted and fired a powerful automatic rifle. The least amount of compassion would indicate that even if she did take the gun, even if she managed to fire the high power automatic rifle without being knocked to the ground, the action would have been in the service of escape rather than a murderous rampage. However, there is no forensic evidence whatsoever that she held the gun or fired it.  No one was shot except the prisoner herself. There were no bullet holes in the walls or ceiling of the small room, and no shell casings recovered from the floor. There were no fingerprints on the gun, and there was no gunpowder on the prisoner’s hands or the curtain in front of her. [Court Documents] Yet a year later, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national who never should have been extradited from Afghanistan to the US in the first place, a bright, well educated person with a PhD from Brandeis University, now incapable if a consistent description of where she had been for the past 5 years, incapable of recognizing her own son, was convicted of separate counts of attempted murder and assault for every American in the room, sentenced to 86 years in prison and incarcerated in Carswell Medical Center in Texas....

.... According to Cornell University Legal Information Institute, under Federal law: the maximum sentence for manslaughter (actually killing someone) is 5-7 years; the maximum sentence for  threatening the President or Vice President of the US is 5 years; the maximum sentence for assaulting a Supreme Court Officer is 1 year though if a deadly weapon is involved it goes up to 10 years. A maximum  sentence of 20 years is allowed for ”helping Al Qaeda develop a nuclear weapon”, slavery and human trafficking, ’genocidal eugenics’, selling child pornography, or performing a deadly act of violence against personnel at an international airport (so long as the person so assaulted doesn’t die).[6.2-6.5] The charges against Aafia Siddiqui have similar maximum sentencing guidelines to helping Al Qaeda build a nuclear weapon or human trafficking or assaulting  personnel in an international airport [6.1.6.6] [5.1-5.3].

The Jury deemed the defendant guilty of  all charges WITHOUT PREMEDITATION. It would seem this verdict would preclude terrorism...... Judge Berman’s sentence was based on the contents of her bag, never addressed in court, and FBI allegations that were never prosecuted.  He ignored clear indications that she suffered from PTSD and that she suffered from mental illness that was serious to merit her placement at the psychiatric ward at Carswell but not serious enough to influence her actions or her participation in the trial, the lack of material evidence for the crime she was convicted of and her persistent claims of prior abuse while incarcerated in Afghanistan or Pakistan.  Why was Aafia Siddiqui prosecuted for one crime and convicted of another/  One can only assume there was not enough evidence to make the preferred case....

For full article, link here

Graphic Novel - The World's Most Dangerous Woman?

This is a graphic novel (comic book style) narrative that summarizes the ordeal of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

This comic style graphic novel was fist published under the title "Justice for Aafia".

Courtesy Christopher Towne

Published on the Ubermensch Blog and on Muslim Matters website.  Please click on image to read the story...

First Published March 21, 2013, MuslimMatters.org

By Andrew Purcell

I haven't really been keeping a diary. It just seemed to be a format that worked well. It is not strictly chronological, but it tells the story. Everything I write here is something I saw, both through interacting with Aafia and her family and sitting through her trial in New York City.

2003. Spring.

I was at my computer reading the news headlines of the day, and an odd item caught my eye. The headline read "FBI Searching for Female al-Qaeda Leader". Al-Qaeda is incapable of having a woman in a position of leadership. It is just not the role in life that women are destined for. Did the FBI miss that memo? I'm always up for a good laugh, especially at the expense of those who assure us that they know best.

So I clicked on the link and my life changed.

The article explained that the FBI was looking for a woman named Aafia Siddiqui. I know a woman named Aafia Siddiqui, and I know her brother, and I know her sister, and I know their mother. They have been close friends of mine forever. Her brother once mentioned that she had a rare combination of names. That there just weren't that many women named Aafia Siddiqui. This must be a different one.

The article continued that she was married, had three small children, she had lived for many years in Boston, that she had degrees from MIT and Brandeis... This stopped being funny very quickly. I e-mailed her brother. What's going on?

"Aafia was picked up over the weekend. Pak government said she was handed over to FBI. The FBI denies having her. Pak government then denied she had been arrested. In that part of the world this is very bad."

Later in the day I spoke to him and learned that her three children, Ahmad, six years old, Maryam, four years old, and Suliman, six months old, had also been taken.

A day that began with "Gee, this is funny" went downhill very quickly... (click on link for full article)

Full Article here

The NEWS

April 09, 2013

DALLAS: American former Attorney General from 60's Mr. Ramsey Clark has said that he concluded after going through all the facts in Dr Aafia Siddiqui's trial that she is innocent and America unjustly kept her in prison.

He was addressing a rally in front of DFW Federal court in downtown Fort Worth Texas. The rally was organized by organization "Peace through Justice" for justice for Aafia Siddiqui.

Clark said it seems after wrongfully convicting Aafia Siddiqui, America is trapped in its own credibility and honor, that is why the country is not serious in releasing her.

He said that he had reviewed a large number of cases in his professional life as attorney, but he never saw such a bizarre case like Aafia Siddiqui's case.

The former attorney general further said among all the political prisoners in the world Aafia Siddiqui's case is second most popular case in the world.

He said the US administration could never answer a question as what are the evidences of Aafia Siddiqui possible connection with Al-Qaeda.

The rally organizer and Peace through Justice Leader Mr. Mauri Saalakhan of the Washington, D.C, while addressing the event said that Dr. Aafia was arrested during President Bush tenure but she is still kept behind bars in Obama's administration.

He said that he would continue the struggle until Aafia got justice.

A similar event was held in March by this organization along with other groups on the tenth anniversary of incarceration of Aafia Siddiqui in front of carswell Federal prison in Fort Worth Texas where Afia Siddiqui is jailed.

This exclusive interview was first published on Muslim Matters website as part of the 10th Anniversary of the kidnapping and rendition of Dr. Aafia and her three minor children, the youngest of whom was 6 months old and has not been seen since 2003.

(Please click on the image to hear the interview)

Durban City Centre brought to a halt at FREE AAFIA PROTEST

25 March 2013

South Africans flocked on Friday 22nd March to the United States Consulate, situated in the heart of the city centre in Durban, in solidarity with the Global Free Aafia Movements to protest on the tenth anniversary of the abduction of Dr. Siddiqui and her three children in Karachi, Pakistan. The picket drew huge public interest as thousands of motorists and pedestrians of all races witnessing the event. The audience was extremely vocal and passionate chants of "Free Free Aafia", echoed through one of the busiest streets in the city. The protesters demanded for an end to the oppression and injustices against Dr Aafia Siddiqui and demanded her repatriation to Pakistan.

The protest action which was held under banner of the "Free Aafia Foundation", was supported by a number of organisations and human rights activists. The picket began with a "flash mob" live demonstration, enacting the kidnapping of a screaming Aafia in the streets of Karachi, being dragged away from her children and brutally beaten and tortured. Shabnam Mohammed, an activist who played the part of Aafia was thrown into a mock cell. With deafening screams, she pleaded for help and repeatedly cried out about the whereabouts of her children.

Full Story here.

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US can consider releasing Aafia in exchange for Afridi: Hoagland
Friday, August 31, 2012

The NEWS
By Muhammad Saleh Zaafir

ISLAMABAD: Acting US Ambassador to Pakistan Richard Hoagland on Thursday revealed that Pakistan had never formally sought the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui in exchange for Dr Shakil Afridi, who is convicted of treason charges, but added that the United States can consider the release of Dr Aafia in exchange for Dr Afridi and is prepared to provide him shelter in the United States.
In an exclusive chat with The News at a diplomatic reception, Richard Hoagland said during the cold-war, his country had exchanged prisoners with the defunct Soviet Union, which was done through backdoor interactions. Like with Russia, the US has no formal agreement with Pakistan for the exchange of prisoners. “But everything is possible in this world, if the will exists,” he said with a broad smile...

Full story here

Published in Daily JANG

PART ONE - JAn 29, 2013

PART TWO - JAn 30, 2013