Dr Afia Siddiqui "The Grey Ghost Lady of Bagram"

[AgNoStIc MuSliM]

If you guys provide links with your claims, or ask each other for links, it'll make it a little easier to determine who is incorrect.

[triston]

Originally Posted by Jana

Well Mr first of all you need to get your own country flag.

And Now about your comment.

I guess it needs some brain to understand the BS about US and your claim that the kid was adopted by her. Well i think we need just little logic to understand that Earthquake was in 2005 while Dr Afia was disappeared along with her 3 Kids in 2003 two years before earthquake.

Plus the kid is only 7 years while he was kidnapped in 2003 so you can imagine how old he would be then.

So Please stop your basless propaganda.

1) I am a Pakistani, and Pak was is and always would be my country. Not only am I a citizen but also have the honour to have served in PAF. Hopefully the clears up some misunderstandings on your part.

2) Aafia’s son freed by Kabul, flown to Islamabad -DAWN - Top Stories; September 16, 2008
Agencies add: “Under the presidential order of Hamid Karzai, we hand over Ali Hassan to Pakistan authorities,” Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen told reporters in Kabul, naming the boy as Ali Hassan and not as Mohammad Ahmed.

“We hope this step should symbolise friendly ties with our neighbouring nation Pakistan,” he said.

Mr Baheen said: “The boy was kept in a guest-house like a guest. He was not a prisoner.”

He said Dr Aafia had adopted the child in 2005 after he lost his parents, a doctor and an engineer, in the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/wo....html?ref=asia

Nevertheless, Afghan officials said that he had given an account under questioning that cast doubt on the family’s claims that Ms. Siddiqui was in United States military detention in Afghanistan for five years.

The boy told them that he had lost his parents in Pakistan’s 2005 earthquake and that he was adopted by Ms. Siddiqui, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sultan Ahmad Baheen, said. That suggests that she was free and living in Pakistan in 2005.

Dr Aafia’s son in Karzai government custody: US

Recently, the lawyers for Dr Siddiqui received a letter from the US Justice Department saying that when the young boy was questioned he told them that he belonged to Azad Kashmir and had lost both his parents in the massive earthquake two years ago. He then, according to the US authorities, claims that he made his way into Afghanistan.


3) Why is it that the boy still denies to be Ahmed even after it has been proven after DNA tests that he is Aafia's son. He still claims his name to be Ali Hassan and not Ahmed Siddiqui.

4) Lastly I am not claiming that one is right and the other is not. What I am suggesting is that rather than jumping to conclusions or bandwagons one should wait for the truth to come out. There are propaganda cells working on both sides and I would rather not believe in either one of them.

[ejaz007]

Originally Posted by triston

Nopes its not a lie, since the son still refuses to be her son and refuses that his name is Ahmad, he claims that his name is Ali Hassan and was adapted by Aafia during her stay in Afghanistan. It was only after DNA testing that it was verified that he was her son. How come he has not come out with any statement about his time in captivity for the last 5 years.

The simplest answer to your question is that why don't you spend 4-5 years as a prisoner with US soldiers and then we will ask you about your name and nationality. I bet you won't even know where your *** is.

[ejaz007]

US prosecutor says Dr Aafia may be unfit for trial

NEW YORK: A United States prosecutor has asked a federal judge to order a psychiatric evaluation of Aafia Siddiqui, who is charged with trying to kill her American interrogators in Afghanistan.

Siddiqui’s September 4 arraignment at Manhattan federal court was delayed after she refused to submit to a strip search, a security procedure requiring inmates to undress and squat in front of guards. Without the search, she cannot be brought to court.

In a letter to US District Judge Richard Berman, US Attorney Michael Garcia said that there was reason to believe Siddiqui, who has refused to co-operate with prison doctors, is suffering from a mental disease and is unfit to stand trial.

The letter, which was made public on Tuesday, asked for a competency hearing and complete psychiatric evaluation.

Garcia asked the court to find that “there is a reasonable cause to believe that the defendant may be suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering her incompetent to enter a plea or stand trial”.

At the last court appearance, Siddiqui’s lawyer, Elizabeth Fink, said federal authorities should treat Siddiqui as someone who may have been the victim of torture. reuters


Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

It seems US is trying to get rid of her and bury her case since they do not have a legitimate case against her.

[muse]

Ehk se ehk namouneh -- so unbelievable, but this is us, this what we are reduced to

More on the Islamist Heroine --




Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s husband breaks his silence after six years




Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Claims most reports in the local media are false, suspects his two ‘missing’ children are in Karachi

By Aroosa Masroor

KARACHI: After six years of silence, Dr Muhammad Amjad Khan, ex-husband of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, has finally spoken up and says that most of the press reports that relate to his former wife as well as his children are false. In an exclusive talk with The News, he said that most claims are being propagated to garner public support and sympathy for Dr Aafia but are one-sided and in most instances untrue.

Dr Aafia Siddiqui, suspected of having links to terrorist organizations, has been charged in a criminal complaint filed in a court of New York on account of attempting to kill US personnel during interrogation and on a charge of assaulting US officers and employees in Kabul, Afghanistan, on July 17, 2008. Subsequently Dr Aafia was imprisoned in Bagram for 18 days before being taken to the US for a trial.

Due to pressure from Aafia Siddiqui’s family, the Pakistan government has been trying to secure her release from the US claiming her to be innocent. Although the US government has guaranteed Aafia the best legal assistance and a fair trial, her family is adamant that she be sent back on grounds that the US authorities have been consistently torturing her for years.

“Aafia’s release cannot be secured by propagating stories based on falsehood and deception,” commented Dr Amjad Khan, in an interview with The News. Dr Amjad, who was married to Dr Aafia for seven years until their divorce in October 2002, said Aafia’s family and supporters should not believe that truth will not be revealed and mere lies will help in securing Aafia’s repatriation.

He added that he is disappointed with the government’s disregard for the law when officials handed over his eldest son, Ahmad, to his aunt Dr Fowzia Siddiqui on his return from Afghanistan last year instead of his legal guardian, his father. “The government made no effort to locate me despite the fact that I am Ahmad’s real and legal guardian. My address in Karachi has not changed for the past 30 years. Ever since I returned from the US after our divorce, I have been living with my family,” he said adding: “Both the Minister for Interior Rehman Malik and Dr Fowzia have been taking credit for obtaining Ahmad’s release even though there was not a stone I left unturned to locate my missing children and obtain their custody according to law.”

Providing documentary proof of the legal agreement between him and Dr Aafia following their divorce, Dr Amjad said that he had been financially supporting his three children Ahmed, Marium and Suleiman until the family stopped accepting the cheques he had been mailing. “After the agreement they accepted my cheques till March 2003. After that my cheques were being returned from Aafia’s home and that got me worried. Soon after I learnt that in April 2003, Aafia and our children had been ‘picked up’ by agencies.” Meanwhile, he received disturbing reports from the family that Aafia chose to leave Karachi with her children as she feared an attack from him.

Curious to locate the whereabouts of his children, Dr Amjad sought the help of the police and government officials to find them. “I was aware of Aafia’s violent personality and extremist views and suspected her involvement in Jihadi activities. My fear later proved to be true when during Uzair Paracha’s trial in the US in 2004, the real purpose of Aafia’s trip to the US (between December 23, 2002 and January 3, 2003) was revealed.”

Elaborating, Dr Amjad disclosed that he later learnt from media reports that Aafia’s family claimed she made this trip to the US for job interviews in December at a time when universities were closed for winter holidays. “I also found it very odd that on the one hand Aafia insisted on leaving the US after September 11, 2001, claiming the country was unsafe for us and our children because the US government was abducting Muslim children, and on the other hand took the risk of travelling to that country again without fearing that she may be captured and may never see our children again.”

While Dr Aafia was in the US, the authorities had been closely watching her, added Amjad. They soon issued the first global “wanted for questioning” alert for the couple in March 2003. “At that time, the agencies did not know we were divorced and I was also unaware of Aafia’s involvement with two other terror suspects, Majid Khan and Ammar Al-Baluchi. They wanted me to persuade Aafia to appear for the interview with them and clear the charges leveled against her just as I had done. That is when she went underground and it later became apparent why she chose to ‘disappear’,” disclosed Dr Amjad.

Sharing details of his unsuccessful marriage with Dr Aafia, Dr Amjad told The News that since their marriage was arranged, he was unaware of Aafia’s violent behaviour. “She got hysterical fits when she became angry and would physically attack me, but I put up with it for the sake of our children.”

Although Amjad and Aafia both were inclined towards religion, he found her opinion towards Jihad to be of an extreme nature that sometimes made him uncomfortable. He became particularly suspicious of his wife’s intentions when soon after the 9/11 attacks, she compelled Amjad to leave Boston (where Amjad was completing his residency) and move to Afghanistan where she claimed “he would be more useful”.

The couple, however, chose to come to Pakistan instead for a vacation and discuss the matter with Amjad’s family. It was here that his parents noticed Aafia’s violent behaviour towards their son on several occasions, particularly when she openly asked for khula (divorce) when Amjad declined to go to Afghanistan. Therefore Amjad decided to file for a divorce as Aafia was adamant she wanted to go. “I tried my best to save our marriage, but divorce was inevitable,” he recalls.

However, after mutual consent, the couple signed a legal agreement whereby the custody of the three minors was given to Aafia, while Amjad was required to pay for their education and maintenance. “Although the agreement says I am permitted to meet my children once a week, I was not allowed to do so,” claimed Amjad sharing a copy of the agreement during the interview.

Based on his past experience, Amjad says he had reason to worry about his children. “I feared Aafia might pursue her political ambitions to the detriment of our children’s welfare so I couldn’t help following her case after her family claimed she had been abducted.” Amjad added that he was tempted to use other means to try and rescue his children in these past five years especially since he had evidence that were missing or kidnapped, he claimed. “But I chose to be patient and pursued the case according to the law.” He also filed a case in court against Aafia to obtain the custody of his children.

“When the Court was unsuccessful, I requested the HRCP to include my children’s names in their missing persons petition in the Supreme Court and also appealed to the Chief Justice for Suo Moto action as this was the only case where three minors were involved.”

However, after Ahmad was released and handed over to Dr Fowzia last year, Dr Amjad requested her to allow him to visit his son, but she refused. “At first she said Ahmed was mentally unfit to talk, and then claimed that he was not my son but an orphan adopted by Aafia and US reports that his DNA matched Aafia’s were also ‘cooked’. I refused to accept any of that as I had identified my son as soon as I saw a report on the electronic media of his arrest in Afghanistan.”

When questioned on what basis was Aafia’s family†denying a meeting with his son, Amjad stated that the family is punishing him for divorcing Aafia. “Aafia’s mother and Dr Fowzia had warned me at the time of our divorce that they would take revenge†by not letting me meet the children,” he said adding “But now they are discouraging a meeting with Ahmad because they fear Ahmad will reveal the truth about Aafia’s activities and whereabouts of his siblings over these years.”

He added that Dr Fowzia had similarly threatened him several years ago by taking a picture of Aafia while she was asleep after she injured her upper lip (by a milk bottle)†in an accident. Dr Fowzia warned Amjad that if he tried to divorce Aafia, she would use the picture against him alleging him to be an abusive husband. “It was made to appear in the picture that Aafia was badly injured. Today, the same picture is being circulated in the media to claim that Aafia was tortured for years in Bagram,” he revealed.†

Furthermore, Amjad listed the several allegations leveled against him over the years to justify his not meeting his children: First they accused him of kidnapping his three children soon after his divorce with Aafia. To deny this accusation, he lodged a complaint against the family with the Sindh Police and requested officials to help him locate his children, but to no avail.

Later, Aafia’s family accused him of being an abusive husband and father preventing the children from meeting their father. “Aafia’s mother has also accused me in the media of changing the children’s names whereas in reality they had resorted to these tactics to conceal the children.”

He alleged that Dr Fowzia also used the Asian Human Rights Commission, an NGO based in Honk Kong, to mislead the government about his two missing children. “The AHRC received the information about my two missing children being in an orphanage in Afghanistan from Dr Fowzia, who was diverting attention away from the place where the children really are.” claimed Amjad.

Earlier, when Aafia’s father died, the family held Amjad responsible for his death too claiming he suffered a stroke after he saw the divorce document. “That is simply not true because I mailed the document two days after Aafia’s father died and that too because I was unaware of the unfortunate incident. Their family never kept me posted on anything in the six-week period between our verbal and written divorce. I was just as shocked at his death.”
Moreover, the family alleged that Aafia was in trouble and had been kidnapped because her former husband (Dr Amjad) handed over her personal diary to the FBI. “After this, false reports about Aafia’s arrest and Pakistani government’s involvement in handing her over to the US despite repeated denials by the Minister of Interior and other officials, started making headlines” claims the doctor, who has now re-married.

It is the whereabouts of his two children ñ Marium now aged 10, and six-year-old Suleiman ñ that worries him now, said Amjad. Like the coordinates of Dr Aafia Siddiqui remained a mystery after she was allegedly ‘picked up’ in March 2003, Dr Amjad believes Aafia’s family may be using the same tactics in the case of his two children, who are reportedly ‘missing’.

“I am sure they are around Karachi and in contact with their maternal family as both Aafia and the children were seen around their house here and in Islamabad on multiple occasions since their alleged disappearance in 2003. They may be living under an assumed identity just like Aafia and Ahmed had been living [as Saliha and Ali Ahsan] for five years before they got arrested,” believes the father. He said Dr Fowzia’s claim that the children are missing after being removed from the Bagram prison in Afghanistan ‘may be an attempt to attract sympathy of the government and the people and distract its attention from the real location.’

[Solomon2]

So these calumnies against the U.S. are entirely false, but doesn't the enmity and anger they generated remain? And how many other false stories like this are circulated for years and years without the benefit of direct contradiction? I can just feel that blind anger building up, up, up. And for what? To support a lie, so someone isn't embarrassed or have to pay up? For that the U.S. government and the American people deserve to be the object of the hate of millions?

[muse]

Today it is US, tomorrow it will be someone else. Now two generations of Pakistanis have grown used tro the idea that their failures are because of the conspiracies of others, and the politicians wangt exactly this, keep the people busy with petty hatreds and lies while they go about their business "looking out" for the treasury.

[ejaz007]

Jury of Dr. Aafia case sends new question to judge
Updated at: 0700 PST, Wednesday, February 03, 2010


NEW YORK – Sami Ibraham: The jury hearing Dr. Aafia Siddiqui case has sent a new question to judge in connection with the statement of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, following which, the judge has summoned members of jury, prosecutors and defense counsels here on Tuesday, Geo news reported.

According to sources, the members of jury, prosecutor lawyers and defense counsel will hold discussion over the new question.

The 12-member jury raised question over the difference appeared in the accounts of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and which separately stated before court and FBI, sources said.

Responding to the newly posed question, the defense counsels and prosecutor lawyers will give their accounts in this connection, sources further said.

The defense counsels have now apprised Pakistani government that they do not anticipate court’s verdict in favour of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, but nevertheless, the defense counsels have also assured government of filing appeal in High Court if court did not acquit Dr. Aafia, sources concluded.

Jury of Dr. Aafia case sends new question to judge

[The Patriot]

From Maududi to Aafia
by Nadim Paracha

She’s being called the “daughter of the nation” who needs to be rescued from the fanged jaws of the Americans. Her name is Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Pakistani TV channels and drawing-rooms are buzzing with talk of this gallant woman who was recently found guilty by an American court for attempting murder, and on whose defence the government of Pakistan has already spent a whopping two million dollars.

On February 5, when Karachi became the horrid scene of two bomb attacks that killed dozens of men, women and children, leaders of various mainstream religious parties (especially the Jamaat-i-Islami) were marching up and down the roads and streets of Lahore condemning the American court’s verdict, insisting that Aafia was innocent, and demanding she be released and returned to Pakistan immediately. Not surprisingly, the Taliban followed suit.

A few days earlier, when TV channels were airing the shameful scenes of groups of lawyers outside the Lahore High Court cursing and abusing media men and the relatives of 12-year-old Shazia, who is said to have died at the hands of a senior lawyer and his family, these religious parties were behaving as if the young maid’s torturous death meant absolutely nothing compared to Aafia’s plight in the US.

Not a single rally or a word of condemnation in this respect slipped out from any of the many defenders of Aafia’s cause. Clearly, her champions are not bothered by the plight of those women who face humiliation and rape every day and then linger in a depressing wilderness and a psychological void. How come these women too are not the daughters of this immaculate bastion of faith called Pakistan?

What’s more, never have these highly vocal keepers of Aafia’s sanctity even superficially censured the aggravating antics of monsters like the Taliban and Al Qaeda at whose murderous hands thousands of innocent Pakistanis have lost their lives. None of the many women, children, and men who were mercilessly slaughtered by these monsters, it seems, were noble, good, or innocent enough to also be celebrated as the brothers, sisters, and children of this nation by the Aafia brigade.

In an excellent piece written by Anas Abbas on the issue, the writer rightly questions the validity of the vocal frenzy exhibited by the religious parties and their skewed mouthpieces in the popular mainstream media about the ‘insults’ that Aafia has supposed to have faced in custody.

Abbas is on the ball when, after pondering the Aafia fan club’s protests, he asks, “why did we not see this in the case of two other missing Pakistani women?” In other words, why such a hue and cry for a convicted felon and not a peep about women like Zarina Marri, who also went missing? Accused of harbouring Baloch nationalists, Marri was abducted by the Pakistan Army from Balochistan in 2005 and is believed to have been kept in an army torture cell in Karachi.

For that matter, why hasn’t the Aafia brigade previously taken up the case of Dr Shazia Khalid, a medical doctor and an employee of Pakistan Petroleum Limited, who was beaten and raped by Captain Hammad at Sui Hospital in 2005. She was then drugged and moved to a psychiatric hospital in Karachi. Later, she was put under house arrest and prevented from contacting lawyers, doctors and human rights officials. After her release, she managed to leave Pakistan after facing death threats.

For every single Aafia, there is a Zarina, Shazia and, of course, a Mukhtaran Mai – victims of either violent feudal traditions, untouchable establishmentarian arrogance, and the maddening forms of social hypocrisy that have been eating up the moral fabric of Pakistani society for decades now.

In the context of the unprecedented and highly subjective media attention that Aafia is getting in Pakistan, Abbas is absolutely right in asking: “Why was Shazia Khalid’s and Zarina Marri’s families never interviewed by Pakistani TV channels? Why was Shazia Khalid’s interview to the BBC never aired by the so called “free” Pakistani electronic media? Why have we not seen mass scale demonstrations in Pakistan for the justice for these two women? Why are pictures of Shazia Khalid not the highlight of every newspaper, TV channel and Pakistani activists’ blogs as pictures of Aafia are?”

The truth is, politico-religious parties and conservative flash-in-the-pans that have sprung up within the country’s electronic media and political spectrum, stand ideologically bankrupt, operating in a vicious vacuum created by the constant failure of Political Islam and ‘militant jihad’ to impose their own versions of ‘Islamic rule’ and revolution in the Muslim world.

Cleverly ignoring the brutality of an experiment gone wrong (i.e. state-sanctioned jihad and a lopsided, undemocratic mixing of religion and politics), these parties and individuals now concentrate on utilising all kinds of modern electronic and communication media.

Mainly using the internet, they bypass conventional political routes (where they have failed), and instead operate like large cyber fringe groups. But they have enough demagogic appeal to attract the commercial and ratings-hungry attention of the mainstream populist media (especially television).

They are likely to fare badly in an open (and real) democratic and political playing field, so keeping in mind the above-mentioned scenario, their constituencies cannot be found in the physical electoral geography of Pakistan. Instead, their constituencies lie in the nation’s drawing-rooms and cyber cafes.

Thus, unlike in the past when their agenda aimed to pressurise the state and schools of the country to impose their version of Islamic law and doctrine, today, these parties and individuals are reaching out to a cyber-savvy and TV-viewing audience through websites crackling with the most conspiratorial assumptions about Pakistan, Islam and their relation to the rest of the world.

The idea behind this (both directly and otherwise) is not all that new. It smacks of Abul ala Maududi and Syed Qutb’s insistence many years ago on the need to socially prepare and indoctrinate the society so it can be readily mobilised for that final ‘Islamic revolution.’

Whereas conventional Islamist organs like Jamaat-i-Islami and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood initially used university and college campuses and even the electoral dynamics of democracy for the above purpose, by the early 1980s, the JI, excited by the prospect of grabbing state power (when it was invited to join the Ziaul Haq dictatorship), short-circuited Maududi’s evolutionary Islamist mantra by encouraging Zia to implement Islamic laws and doctrines that were alien to Pakistan’s Islamic polity and traditions and thus began to mutate the society’s natural religious evolution.

Islamist terrorism today is clearly symbolic of the frustration the once heroically perceived ‘mujahideen’ and jihadis began to experience when, buoyed by the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan, they failed to convert other Muslim countries towards their brand of faith and jihad.

Interestingly, this failure and its violent consequences has seen the jihad brigade’s indirect spokespersons and sympathisers in cyber space and the media go back to the Maududdist drawing-board, that of initiating the Islamic revolutionary process on a social level, specifically through the media.

But the problem is, as mentioned before, the world-view being popularised by the sympathisers has already mutated Pakistan’s social evolution. In other words, instead of Pakistan’s social and cultural polity taking a natural and modern evolutionary course towards developing a collective democratic mindset that respects ethnic, religious and sectarian diversity and understands the elements that make a country develop a progressive relationship with other nations and peoples, the Islamist worldview has only managed to make the society collapse inwards, hiding from imaginary demons in the shape of ‘anti-Islam’ and ‘anti-Pakistan’ forces which are supposedly obsessed by the idea of destroying the country and its religion.

This is the mindset and worldview from which many Pakistanis are screening Aafia’s case. However, this worldview is blind to the fate of various Pakistani women who have suffered miserably at the hands of religious bigots, feudal lords and military regimes at home. Since Aafia’s image falls well within the precepts of this worldview (hijab-wearer, anti-America, Jew-hater, etc.), she is automatically raised to the status of being a cross between a heroine (a sort of Lady Saladin), and a helpless damsel in distress.

The truth is, if one is ready to face being socially ostracised by allowing himself to closely study the Aafia case objectively and without the crippling sight of the Islamist worldview, he is likely to concur with the American courts’ decision that, yes, Aafia was not innocent; at least not as innocent as her many sympathisers would have us believe.

The Dawn Blog Blog Archive From Maududi to Aafia

[Armchair General Bob]

Some of you might not be aware of Yvonne Rifley's lightly publicized backtrack on the prisoner 650 claim. Here it is:

"British journalist Yvonne Ridley who embraced Islam in Taliban captivity told that prisoners No. 650 was not Dr. Aafia Siddiqui rather another Pakistani woman who had been held in solitary confinement f...or years at the Bagram US base near Kabul"

ONLINE - International News Network

More discussion on the case can be found here: The Mysterious case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui | Facebook