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Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Injustice - by Stephen Lendman
On February 3, a Department of Justice press release headlined "Aafia Siddiqui Found Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court of Attempting to Murder US Nationals in Afghanistan and Six Additional Charges."
At her scheduled May 6 sentencing, she "faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each of the attempted murder and armed assault charges; life in prison on the firearms charge; and eight years in prison on each of the remaining assault charges. SIDDIQUI faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison on the firearms charge."
On February 3, New York Times writer CJ Hughes headlined: "Pakistani Scientist Found Guilty of Shootings," convicting her on all seven counts, including attempted murder - "capping a trial that drew notice for its terrorist implications as well as its theatrics," but omitting convincing evidence of Siddiqui's innocence. Instead, Hughes said she was arrested with "instructions (in her purse) on making explosives and a list of New York landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building." Her defense team acknowledged their existence, but Siddiqui denied packing them or knowing of their origin. She later suggested she copied them from a magazine, planned no terrorist acts, nor did her indictment claim them.
Hughes also said she "raised suspicions when she and her three children vanished in Pakistan in 2003." She didn't vanish. Her mother said she "left the family home in Gulshan-e-lqbal in a taxi on March 30, 2003 to catch a flight for Rawalpindi, but never reached the airport." Pakistani intelligence agents abducted her, turned her over to US authorities, after which her long ordeal of secret imprisonment, interrogations, and years of brutalizing torture began, even though she wasn't charged.
Her son Mohammed was later released on condition he say nothing. Her other two children, Maryam and Suleman, disappeared and may have been killed.
In May 2004, Pakistan's Interior Minister confirmed she was turned over to US authorities in 2003 after no link between her and Al Qaeda was established. In 2006, Amnesty International called her one of many of the "disappeared" in America's "war on terror." In 2007, a Ghost Prisoner Human Rights Watch report suggested she was held in secret CIA detention.
In February 2008, the Asian Human Rights Commission said she was brought to Karachi and severely tortured to secure her compliance as a government witness against Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, related to Siddiqui through marriage to his nephew. He reportedly "gave her up" after capture on March 1, 2003, after which she and her children disappeared.
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