Dr Afia Siddiqui "The Grey Ghost Lady of Bagram"

[dabong1]

'Prisoner 650' at Bagram, suspected to be a Pakistani woman allegedly raped, tortured and kept in a cage by US soldiers in a men's facility. Rights activists believe she could be Dr Afia Siddiqui who disappeared from Karachi along with her three underage kids in 2003.

Aafia Siddiqui - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IslamicTube.net : Prisoner 650 - The Grey Ghost Lady of Bagram - Prisoner 650 is a Pakistani women held by the terrorist American military for many years without any trial in the notorious Bagram Prison in Afghanistan. Her screams have reached the ea

Four years in Bagram as Prisoner 650
Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:03:00


Yvonne Ridley
British journalist Yvonne Ridley flew to Pakistan on a whirlwind trip this week to highlight the plight of a woman who has been held in US custody for more than four years.

She referred to the woman, known only by her prisoner number 650, as The Grey Lady of Bagram.

More than 100 journalists attended the press conference hosted by Pakistan political leader Imran Khan who pledged his full support to Ridley's mission, which is part of a Cage Prisoner Campaign to help the female detainee.

A statement of support from British MP and RESPECT Party leader George Galloway was also read out during the conference.

Details of Prisoner 650 are being kept secret by the U.S. military.

On Monday night she said, “I think everyone was shocked to hear that the Americans were holding this woman at Bagram in Afghanistan. From the information coming through I am told she is being held in exactly the same conditions as the men and has absolutely no privacy when it comes to toilet and shower facilities.

“This would never happen to a Western woman and it shows just how women are viewed by the US military. There is even a suggestion she has been molested and sexually abused by her captors. We need to demand the truth,” added Ridley who was held captive herself in Afghanistan for 11 days in September 2001.

“I was released on humanitarian grounds. Mercifully my treatment was good, respectful and decent, although still terrifying,” she added.

Ridley, also a patron of the organization Cage Prisoner, revealed how she first read about the woman in a book written by ex-Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg called Enemy Combatant.

“I remembered Moazzam telling me about the woman's screams and how he first imagined they could be from his wife. In truth, I thought maybe he had just been listening to a tape recorder as part of a form of mental torture.

“However, we now know the screams came from a woman who has been held in Bagram for some years. And without compromising anyone, we can also reveal from impeccable sources that her prison number is 650.

“This information has been enough to scramble the Pakistan media into action by demanding the return of this woman to her homeland immediately,” added Ridley.

Joining her at the open air press conference in Islamabad at the headquarters of Khan's PTI party was Saghir Hussain, a lawyer and member of Cage.

He handed over a dossier prepared by Cage which reveals the full extent of the Disappeared from Pakistan… individuals who have been literally kidnapped from the streets.

“Prisoner 650 is just the tip of a very nasty iceberg of human rights abuses, illegal detentions and rendition flights. It is a shameful episode in Pakistan's history which must be put right.”

Amina Masood Janjua, chair of the Defense of Human Rights, also joined the platform along with other supporters whose husbands, sons and brothers have disappeared without trace. She thanked Cage for its dossier and the supporting work it had conducted on the Disappeared.

“I wonder how can we hand over our sister to the non-Muslims for their illegal trial by men whose history is full of rape and other abuses to prisoners,” the Pakistani daily Dawn quoted Ridley as saying.

Ms. Ridley read the text from the book's section covering Mr. Begg's stay in Bagram, “I began to hear the chilling screams of a woman next door… Why have you got a woman next door? They told me there was no woman. But I was unconvinced. Those screams echoed through my worst nightmares for a long time. And I later learned in Guantanamo, from other prisoners, that they had heard the screams too.”

She said the account had been corroborated by four Arabs who had escaped from Bagram in July 2005. “While on the run, one not only confirmed he had heard a woman's screams, but said he had seen her.”

Ms. Ridley said, “My story made international headlines, front page pictures and major stories on TV. But there has not been one word, not one paragraph about Prisoner 650 -- the 'grey lady' of Bagram, a murderous detention facility under control of the U.S. military and intelligence services.”

She urged every Pakistani to ring America, and ask them who Prisoner 650 is. What was her crime? Who else was being held illegally? How many secret detention centers were there?

Ms. Ridley's colleague Saghir Hussain gave details about other people of the country who had 'disappeared'.

“All, like the grey lady of Bagram, have been illegally abducted by secretive intelligence agencies. They began disappearing in 2001 during the so-called war on terror,” he said.

Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan demanded that the government hold an investigation into the case. “What has the sovereign parliament done about the missing persons?” he asked.

 

[dabong1]

Declan Walsh The Guardian

Without a traceSeven-year-old Saud Bugti's father was picked up by secret police on a street corner in Karachi last November. No one has heard from him since. He has joined the ranks of Pakistan's 'disappeared' - victims of the country's brutal attempts to wage war on both al-Qaida and those who fail to support the government. But how many innocent people are being caught up in this? And what is America's connection to the barbaric torture of suspects?

They vanish quietly and quickly. Some are dragged from their beds in front of their terrified families. Others are hustled off the streets into a waiting van, or yanked from a bus at a lonely desert junction. A windowless world of sweat and fear awaits. In dark cells, nameless men bark questions. The men brandish rubber whips, clenched fists, whirring electric drills, pictures of Osama bin Laden. The ordeal can last weeks, months or years.
These are Pakistan's disappeared - men and women who have been abducted, imprisoned and in some cases tortured by the country's all-powerful intelligence agencies. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has counted 400 cases since 2002; it estimates hundreds more people may have been snatched. The phenomenon started with the great sweeps for al-Qaida suspects after September 11, but has dramatically increased in recent years, and now those who disappear include homegrown "enemies of the state" - poets, doctors, housewives and nuclear scientists, accused of terrorism, treason and murder. Guilty or innocent, it's hard to know, because not one has appeared before a court.

An angry Pakistani public wants to know why. The disappearances are increasingly perceived as Pakistan's Guantánamo Bay - a malignant outgrowth of the "war on terror". This week, the issue moved centre stage with the showdown between President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan's chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Many believe the judge is being victimised for championing the cases of the disappeared. "These are Gestapo tactics," says Iqbal Haider, a former minister. "The more we protest, the more innocent people are being hurt. And what frightening stories they tell."

For Abid Zaidi it started with a phone call one afternoon last April. The softly spoken 26-year-old was at work at Karachi University's department of zoology in a cavernous room of stuffed animals, sagging skeletons and yellowing name tags. The voice on the phone instructed him to report to Sadder police station in the city centre. There, a handful of men were waiting for him: he believes they belonged to Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the army's powerful spy agency. They clapped cuffs on his wrists, wrapped a band around his eyes and drove him to a cell. Then, he says, the torture started.

The men beat him, he says, with a chain, until he collapsed. He was brought to a military hospital; there doctors brushed off his pleas for help. Then he was flown to another detention centre, where he was shown graphic images of torture. "People's skin was being removed with knives and blades and they were being drilled," he says. "It was really terrible." Then they hung him upside down from a butcher's hook, his face dipping into a pool of sewage water.

The interrogators wanted Zaidi to admit his supposed part in the Nishtar Park bombings. In early April, a suicide bomber had killed 50 people at a Sunni religious gathering in central Karachi. The officials accused Zaidi, a prominent young Shia, of orchestrating the massacre. Zaidi tried to explain he was more interested in zoology than zealotry. They did not believe him.

In July, an official told him he had been sentenced to hang. Zaidi wrote a will. "I felt at peace because I knew God was with me," he says. But it was a ruse. At 4am on the morning of the "execution", having refused to admit his guilt, a dramatic reprieve was announced. Shortly afterwards, he underwent a lie detector test and on August 18 he was flown to Karachi. The blindfold was lifted. Zaidi was driven through the city. The car stopped, a man handed him 200 rupees (£1.80) and pushed the car door open. "He said, 'Don't open your eyes,'" says Zaidi. When the engine noise had receded, he found himself standing at a bus stop near Karachi University. He got down on his knees and prayed. Then he phoned his brother to take him home.

Zaidi's account cannot be verified because, officially speaking, he was never in government custody. However a senior police officer familiar with the case describes it as a major embarrassment. "That boy was picked up by a young officer," says the official, who asks not to be named. "[The police] knew it was the wrong guy. But they refused to listen."

The ISI is the most powerful arm of Pakistan's intelligence establishment, commonly referred to as "the agencies". Founded by a British army officer in 1948 and headquartered at an anonymous concrete block in Islamabad, the ISI is famed and feared in equal part. Its influence soared during the 1980s, when it smuggled vast amounts of American-funded weapons to mujahideen guerrillas fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. More recently, it has organised guerrilla groups fighting Indian troops in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The other major agencies in Pakistan are Military Intelligence and the civilian Intelligence Bureau, and all three of these major agencies have variously been accused of rigging elections, extra-judicial assassinations and other dirty tricks.

But until 9/11, disappearances were rare. Then, in late 2001, as al-Qaida fugitives fled from Afghanistan into Pakistan, Musharraf ordered that the agencies show full cooperation to the FBI, CIA and other US security agencies. In return, the Americans would give them equipment, expertise and money.

Suddenly, Pakistan's agencies had sophisticated devices to trace mobile phones, bug houses and telephone calls, and monitor large volumes of email traffic. "Whatever it took to improve the Pakistanis' technical ability to find al-Qaida fighters, we were there to help them," says Michael Scheuer, a former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit. An official with an American organisation says he once received a startling demonstration of the ISI's new capabilities. Driving down a street inside a van with ISI operatives, he could monitor phone conversations taking place in every house they passed. "It was very impressive, and really quite spooky," he says.

The al-Qaida hunt became a matter of considerable pride for President Bush's close friend, the president of Pakistan. "We have captured 672 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars," wrote Musharraf in his autobiography last year. (The boast sparked outrage at home in Pakistan and was scrubbed from later Urdu-language versions of his book.) Prize captures included the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, who has apparently confessed to a string of terror plots after four years as a captive, and Abu Faraj al Libbi, another alleged bin Laden lieutenant. But certain innocents were also swept up in the dragnet.

Brothers Zain and Kashan Afzal, for example, were detained and beaten many times over eight months by Pakistani agents convinced they belonged to al-Qaida. Zain, now 25, remembers that, in between the thrashings, the "FBI wallahs" - a woman and two men - would come to visit. "They showed me a picture of Osama and asked if I knew him," he says at his home in Karachi. "I told them I had only seen him on television." As American citizens - the brothers were born in the US, where their father lives - they might have expected better treatment. Instead, they got threats. "The Americans said if we did not tell them everything, they would send us to Guantánamo Bay," says Zain.

Like many of the disappeared, the Afzals had a colourful past that drew the attention of the agencies. According to a well-informed source, their names appeared on a list of potential recruits found on a laptop belonging to Naeem Noor Khan, an al-Qaida computer expert arrested weeks earlier, in July 2004. They were also questioned about a visit they had made to the lawless tribal belt of Waziristan. But whatever they had done, it was clearly not enough to warrant prosecution by either Pakistan or the US. In April 2005, they were brought to Lahore airport, handed a pair of airplane tickets in other people's names, and set free.

The physical damage has healed - Zain suffered a burst eardrum - but the mental scars remain. "He hears voices in the night coming to take him away again," says his wife Sara. The couple agreed to meet the Guardian and give their first newspaper interview in an attempt to press their case for a new American passport. Despite numerous entreaties, the US consulate in Karachi has stonewalled requests to re-issue their passports, which were confiscated during their arrest. "I am scared because of what has happened," says Sara. "Pakistan is not a reliable country, you know." A US embassy spokeswoman in Islamabad declines to comment on their case.

The truth is that the American government still quietly supports the disappearances of al-Qaida suspects, says Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch, which has documented many cases. "The abuse has become even more brazen because of US complicity," he says. He claims that American officials are regular visitors to ISI safehouses in Islamabad, Lahore and Rawalpindi where torture has occurred. They have supervised interrogations from behind one-way mirrors, he says. In FBI internal documents, he says, torture is referred to as "locally acceptable forms of interrogation".

For some detainees the safehouses are the back door to the mysterious world of CIA "black sites" - secret prisons in Afghanistan, eastern Europe and across the Arab world where torture is allegedly rife. Marwan Jabour, a Palestinian who was picked up in 2004, recently gave an extraordinarily detailed account of life in this system. After being tortured by ISI agents in Lahore - they strapped a rubber band around his penis - he said he was moved to a "villa" in Islamabad where he was questioned by US officials. "It seemed to me that this place was controlled by Americans. They were in charge," he told Human Rights Watch. "They would say: 'If you cooperate, we'll let you sleep.'" A female official told him in Arabic, "**** Allah in the ***." One of four fellow Pakistani detainees bore the marks of severe torture. "You can't imagine how much they were hurting him," said Jabour, who was released last summer.

In its annual human rights report published last Tuesday, the US State Department acknowledged the disappearances but skated around the US's own role. "The country experienced an increase in disappearances of provincial activists and political opponents," it noted.

In fact, most recent disappearances have nothing to do with al-Qaida. To quell an insurgency in Baluchistan - a vast western province with massive oil and gas reserves - the agencies, in particular Military Intelligence, have rounded up hundreds of suspected rebels in the past two years. Of the 99 abductions registered by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan last year, 73 were from Baluchistan. Officials believe many more have gone unreported. Shamsa Toon, a 70-year-old woman, crouches on the pavement outside Karachi's Press Club clutching a giant photograph of her son, Gohram Saleh. He has been missing since August 8 2004, she says; this was the 166th day of her vigil. Her 13-year-old granddaughter is threatening to commit suicide if there was no news. "He's just a cab driver, not any rebel," she says, tears streaming down her face. "His only crime is that he is a Baluch."

Musharraf's officials swat the issue away with blunt denials. "I can say with authority that these people are not with any agency or government department," says Brigadier Iqbal Cheema, head of the "crisis management cell", which spearheads anti-terror operations, at the Interior Ministry. "Most of these people creating a hue and cry belong to the militant organisations and have jihadi backgrounds. They are involved in these activities themselves." But the current confrontation with the chief justice has brought a renewed focus. Western diplomats are queasy about such obvious abuses from an ally they claim is "moving towards democracy". And the death of Hayatullah Khan, a tribal journalist who was found dead last June after seven months apparently in the custody of the agencies, has further fuelled the outrage.

Last November, Chaudhry, the chief justice, ordered the agencies to "find" 41 people who had gone missing. Subsequently, half were quietly released. But the court actions have mostly just underlined the impotence of the civilian institutions in the face of a powerful military machine. When ISI lawyers plead that they "cannot locate" certain detainees, the judges can only fume and bang their benches.

Meanwhile, tearful relatives are left grasping for even a shred of news. Qazim Bugti, the mayor of Dera Bugti, a small town in Baluchistan, was picked up last November. His wife Asmat, left behind to look after their five children, weeps when she talks of her husband's disappearance. "Does President Musharraf not have children of his own? Would he like to see them treated like this?" she says in the family's Karachi apartment. She agrees to speak despite whispered phone warnings to keep quiet: the agencies do not appreciate publicity.

Several relatives say they have been instructed not to contact the media or human rights groups. Khalid Khawaja, who led a pressure group on behalf of some detainees, himself went missing last month. He was reportedly taken to Attock Fort, a notorious military prison. But the most audacious disappearance, perhaps, is that of Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost.

During his three years of captivity in Guantánamo Bay, Dost, 37, became known as the "poet of Guantánamo" for his sharp verse. After his release, he wrote The Broken Shackles of Guantánamo, and it was published in the Pashto language last September; it became an instant hit in Peshawar's bookstalls, selling more than 10,000 copies. It also contained stinging criticism of the ISI. Weeks later, policemen in a van abducted Dost as he walked from his local mosque after Friday prayers. His brother, Badruzzaman Badr - also a former Guantánamo detainee - says, "The book is the reason behind this. They are angry about what we have written. They claim to have democracy and freedom of expression in this country, but it is not real."

When Dost's case came before a local court for the third time in January, the judges again asked the ISI to produce the missing man. Again there was no answer. Now Badruzzaman, who has abandoned his gemstone business and no longer sleeps at home, fears he will be next. "I do not feel safe, they could arrest me any time. But where can I go?" he says.

Abid Zaidi, the zoology student from Karachi, has also learned the price of going public. In late October, he travelled to Islamabad to describe his ordeal before a press conference organised by Amnesty International. Shortly afterwards he was picked up again, this time by men in uniform. Zaidi says they were flushed with anger. "They told me: 'Next time, we will not pick you up. We will kill you'".

Declan Walsh on Pakistan's 'disappeared ' victims | World news | The Guardian

 

[Spring Onion]

Where are the Human Rights organizations now.

Where are those US/Western funded organizations now who were barking like dogs over Mukhtaran case but now no b.itch from these women rights organization is coming forward to plead the case of poor Afia siddiqi.

Why all of them are silent now.

Where is that smoker Asma Jehangir now

Where is Mr Ansar Bureney who was quick to fight for Indian spy but now he dosnt have the guts to take up Afia's case

 

[Goodperson]

It was a touching story I did google search for news about Dr Afia Siddiqui here is what I found

Pakistan: 'Al-Qaeda' woman in Afghan prison, claims activist

Karachi, 28 July (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Before she reached the age of 30, Aafia Siddiqui achieved more than most Pakistani women could ever imagine.

Siddiqui, born in 1972, obtained a biology degree in the United States and later a doctorate in neurological science. She was married with three children and led a comfortable life.

But she disappeared in 2003 after returning to Pakistan and then added to the list of most dangerous al-Qaeda suspects compiled by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2004.

While the FBI is still "seeking information" about Siddiqui's whereabouts, others claim she is the only female prisoner, 'Prisoner 650', being held at the US detention centre at Bagram, 60 kilometres from Kabul.

British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who was captured by the Taliban and later converted to Islam, visited Pakistan recently and called on the international community to work for the release of Aafia whom she calls a "grey lady".

Siddiqui was also included in a list published by Amnesty International in June 2007 as someone for whom there was "evidence of secret detention by the United States and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown".

Several former prisoners including British Muslim Moazzam Begg, who was held at Bagram before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and later released, and some Arab detainees tell the story of prisoner number 650, the only woman at Bagram. Their accounts claim that the detained woman cries all the time and appears to have lost her sanity.

"We have only indications on which we can claim that she is no other person but Aafia Siddiqui," retired Squadron leader and head of the Defence of Human Rights organisation Khalid Khawaja told Adnkronos International (AKI).

"She left her home to go to the airport from her Karachi residence," he told AKI. "It appears that she was picked up somewhere going to the airport. I tried to contact her mother but she refused to talk and later she also disappeared."

"Siddiqui disappeared with her three children. Neither her or her children's whereabouts have been known for the last five years."

Khawaja works for the cause of missing people, including those detained by security agencies allegedly without charges or trial.

Khawaja himself was imprisoned for several months last year, including a period when the government said that it had no idea where he was.

He was a senior official of the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI when they were fueling jihadi resistance movements against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and after being forced to retire he went to Afghanistan and fought along side with Osama bin Laden.

Khawaja said Pakistani authorities had confirmed that she was initially arrested by security agencies and then the Pakistan's Interior Minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat said she was in Pakistan's custody and would be released soon.

"Like many other prisoners, Aafia also seems to have been transferred to the FBI who would have taken her to Bagram Airbase jail for further interrogation," Khalid Khawaja said.

AKI tried to reach Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat by telephone but received no response.

"The government does not want to discuss this matter because they have handed over dozens of people to the US in violation of rules," he said.

"That is why when the deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry tried to summon the intelligence chiefs and ask them to clarify their position concerning missing people, he was sacked."

Pakistan's Foreign Office has denied knowledge of the alleged detention of a Pakistani woman.

But the FBI's website says it is seeking information about Siddiqui.

"Although the FBI has no information indicating this individual is connected to specific terrorist activities, the FBI would like to locate and question this individual," it said.

In May 2004 the FBI named the woman among seven dangerous al-Qaeda suspects accused of plotting attacks.

AKI - Adnkronos international Pakistan: 'Al-Qaeda' woman in Afghan prison, claims activist

 

[Spring Onion]

Bitish journalist Yvonne Ridley, who was captured by the Taliban and later converted to Islam, visited Pakistan recently and called on the international community to work for the release of Aafia whom she calls a "grey lady"


The manner in which Taliban treated Bitish journalist Yvonne Ridley and the way F.ilthy American soldiers are treating the Pakistani woman Afia imprisoned in sub-human conditions at Bagram prison is sharp reminder and proof of the difference between Islam and the non-Islamic world and respect for human.

 

[dabong1]

I dont want to think about what this woman and her children have been put through.....

At the start we all said do not hand a single muslim to the US.....if the guys from saudi,hand him over to the saudis and let them have the hassle from the US.
But no...we had to hand over "non pakistani terrorist" and that was okay by many and then we started to hand over pakistani citizens.
It never ends...they just want more and more.

 

[PakistaniPatriot]

Asalam Alaikum everyone. I contacted YHN organization and they got back to me through facebook giving me the following link. This is a petition to free Dr. Afia Siddiqui and her innocent little children. Sign it please and spread the word as fast as you can. Thanks.


Appeal for the Release of Dr. Afia Siddiqui & Her 3 Children Petition

 

[roadrunner]

If this story was mentioned by someone other than Yvonne Ridley, i might have believed it.

If the only evidence is Moazzem Begg and 4 other Arabs that have never seen her, then it sounds bogus. Just another conspiracy to keep you busy.

 

[dabong1]

If this story was mentioned by someone other than Yvonne Ridley, i might have believed it.

If the only evidence is Moazzem Begg and 4 other Arabs that have never seen her, then it sounds bogus. Just another conspiracy to keep you busy.

1. Do you believe Dr Afia Siddiqui existed ?
2. If you believe she existed where is she now.

 

[roadrunner]

1. Do you believe Dr Afia Siddiqui existed ?
2. If you believe she existed where is she now.

One can say she existed. This shouldn't be difficult to prove.

How about this? She was murdered along with her kids, and has since not been seen? This is just as possible as your story. Both are possibly complete concoctions. I'd say it was more likely even that she was murdered, than some elusive "grey lady" that only Ridley and some Arabs know about.

 

[dabong1]

One can say she existed. This shouldn't be difficult to prove. .

I think either the media are totally fabricating the story or there is some truth in it.
I think we can say she existed and that she was handed to the US.

Would you agree to the above.

How about this? She was murdered along with her kids, and has since not been seen? This is just as possible as your story..

Yeah it is possible,but nobody has pointed to that direction ,so i am inclined to take yvonne ridleys word and mozzam baigs over the US army version of events......who have a track record of BS.

Both are possibly complete concoctions. I'd say it was more likely even that she was murdered, than some elusive "grey lady" that only Ridley and some Arabs know about.

Murdered by who..?

Only a few arabs knew about torture in iraq carried out by the US but it turned out to be true.

 

[roadrunner]

I think either the media are totally fabricating the story or there is some truth in it.
I think we can say she existed and that she was handed to the US.

Would you agree to the above.

No. I would only agree that she existed. Whether she was handed to the US, noone has proven. It's just as likely that she was murdered and someone is using it for their own agenda, than she was arrested off the streets and is being held in Guantanomo.

Yeah it is possible,but nobody has pointed to that direction ,so i am inclined to take yvonne ridleys word and mozzam baigs over the US army version of events......who have a track record of BS.

Why would the US or anyone else focus in that direction, when they don't even know who Ridley is talking about? It's like you telling me that Satan or Shaytaan exists, since i don't deny it, or give another explanation for a bad event, then it must be that he exists. It's utterly illogical.

The US cannot disprove or offer an alternative explanation because they don't know what on earth Ridley is on about. And I'm inclined to agree with their position.

Though the US has come out with proven BS, so have the Mullah FM's, Ridley, and Moazzem Begg, none of whom have actually seen this person. Why would I take their words for it then?

Murdered by who..?

Possibly a relation, for example. A lover? A drunk tramp? It could be just about anything? For sure homicides do happen in Pakistan.

Only a few arabs knew about torture in iraq carried out by the US but it turned out to be true.

The Arabs were pretty quiet about the torture in fact. The torture only came to light when some US soldiers reported the incidents to newspapers.

 

[ejaz007]

FBI is looking for her so she does exist. Most likely scenario is that she is in US custody courtesy of Mr. Musharaf. US normally does not keep people like Aafia in US but in some third country to avoid US legal system. It is likely that she is in Afghanistan. This is what FBI site says about her:

FBI Seeking Information - Aafia Siddiqui

 

[ejaz007]

The strange story of Aafia Siddiqui

By Khalid Hasan



WASHINGTON: Aafia Siddiqi, the highly-qualified 29-year old Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist wanted by the FBI for her alleged membership of Al Qaeda, once flew from Quetta to Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, on a gem-smuggling assignment.

According to a detailed profile published by a Boston magazine, until the FBI called her a terrorist, she was living a “normal” life in Boston with her children and her doctor husband. In reality, the article by Katherine Ozment says, she was a “high-profile Al Qaeda operative”. She often travelled to Monrovia on her secret missions and would be driven to Hotel Boulevard, where other Al Qaeda figures had stayed, and “taken good care of until the deal was done”. The man who would drive her from the airport to the hotel, a 60-minute drive, would later become the chief informant in a United Nations-led investigation. He described her as a quiet woman who wore a traditional headscarf and kept mostly to herself. She spent the week holed up in her room, making trips into town for small errands.

On one of her trips to Monrovia in June 2001, she left as quietly as she had entered, but with a large parcel containing gems from Africa’s illegal diamond trade. They would be used as a convenient, hard-to-trace way of funding Al Qaeda’s global terror operations. She was not seen again in Monrovia, but earlier this year, one of the men who had seen her in Liberia noticed a photograph of her and recognised the person. At a news conference in May this year, US Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that the FBI was looking for seven people with suspected ties to Al Qaeda. MIT graduate and former Boston resident Aafia Siddiqui was the only woman on the list. After her photos appeared on television, the informant picked up the phone and dialled investigators at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is examining Africa’s illegal diamond trade. The informant was convinced that the woman in the photographs was the woman who had come to Liberia.

Her family denies she was ever in Liberia, with her family’s attorney, Elaine Whitfield insisting, “Aafia Siddiqui was here in June 2001. And I can prove it.” If she can prove Siddiqui wasn’t in Liberia that week, she’ll damage one of the most puzzling cases of alleged terrorism to emerge from 9/11. The claim that Siddiqui was involved in diamond trading is another in a series of sometimes surprising, sometimes vague accusations by government officials. In Siddiqui’s case, the allegations have been further clouded by the often inaccurate, even hyperbolic descriptions of her by the media, says the article.

“To those who knew her, Aafia Siddiqui was a kind, quiet woman living the normal life of a Pakistani expat in Boston. To the FBI, which displayed her photograph at that press conference in May, she was a suspected terrorist with ties to a chief mastermind of 9/11 - and the knowledge, skills, and intention to continue Al Qaeda’s terror war in the United States and abroad. Could one woman embody such diametrically opposed identities? Who is the real Aafia Siddiqui? And where has she gone?” the writer asks.

Born in Karachi on March 2, 1972, Aafia was one of three children of Mohammad Siddiqui, a doctor trained in England, and Ismet, a homemaker. Mohammed, Aafia’s brother, is an architect living in Houston with his wife, a paediatrician, and their children. Fowzia, Aafia’s sister, is a Harvard-trained neurologist who was working at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore until she decided to go back to Pakistan. Aafia was a graduate of MIT. She moved to Texas in 1990 to be near her brother and had good enough grades after spending a year at the University of Houston to transfer to MIT. Siddiqui’s fellow students say she was a quiet, studious woman who was devout in her religious beliefs but not a fundamentalist. She often wore a headscarf but didn’t cover her face.

While at MIT Siddiqui apparently joined an association for Muslim students. She wrote three guides for members who wanted to teach others about Islam. On the group’s website, Siddiqui explained how to run a daw’ah table, an informational booth used at school events to educate people about, and persuade them to convert to, Islam. Other references, however, reveal a passion for Islam that could be called hardline. In one of her pamphlets she wrote, “May Allah give this strength and sincerity to us so that our humble effort continues, and expands until America becomes a Muslim land.”

Her husband Amjad Khan turns out to have been more fundamentalist in his religious beliefs than her and wanted to return to Pakistan to raise the children in an “Islamic” way while Aafia wanted to stay in America. According to Hasan Abbas, now a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and the author of the recently published ‘Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism’, remembers the story of the couple’s marital troubles differently. He was told she was more extreme in her views than her husband. Siddiqui ordered the Quran and other Islamic books to be distributed to prisons and on school campuses. Boxes of them would arrive at the local mosque, and she would come pick them up. Siddiqui’s missionary work stemmed from her belief that it was her duty to bolster the Muslim community around her. “She was always very frustrated here that Muslims were not addressing the needs of their community,” says a woman who was a student of Siddiqui’s. “She said we needed to be doing more to help our people and that we needed to address the needs of the community.” She says Siddiqui wanted her husband to use his medical skills to help the less fortunate.

In July 2001, two Saudi nationals, Abdullah Al Reshood and Hatem Al Dhahri, took over Khan and Siddiqui’s lease when the couple decided to move. During that time, Al Reshood received a $20,000 wire transfer from the Saudi government. The money, a Saudi official later explained, was sent by the Saudi government to Al Reshood to pay for medical treatment for his wife. Siddiqui and her husband were by now being watched by the FBI for having used a debit card to buy night-vision goggles, body armour, and military manuals from American websites, and for donating to charities the FBI watches closely. When questioned, Khan told authorities he had purchased the military items for big-game hunting in Pakistan, saying goggles and armour weren’t available there. Siddiqui, who was questioned only incidentally, was quickly released. Shortly after that, citing the difficulty of living as Muslims in the United States after 9/11, the couple returned to Pakistan. They stayed in Pakistan for a short time, then returned to the United States. They remained here until 2002, then moved back to Pakistan. The tension between the couple had continued to grow and finally reached breaking point in August 2002. Siddiqui was eight months pregnant with their third child, and she and Khan were now estranged. She and the children stayed at her mother’s house, while Khan lived elsewhere in Karachi.

One day, Khan came over to Aafia’s parents’ house bearing a letter explaining that he was going to divorce Siddiqui. He started reading the letter, and a heated argument began between Khan and Siddiqui’s parents. The fight was too much for Siddiqui’s father who had a heart attack and died. Within weeks, Siddiqui gave birth to a son. Siddiqui stayed at her mother’s house for the rest of the year, returning to the United States without her children around December 2002 to look for a job in the Baltimore area, where her sister had begun working at Sinai Hospital. The real purpose of her trip, the FBI suspects, was to open a post office box for Majid Khan, a purported Al Qaeda operative who allegedly had plans to blow up gas stations and fuel tanks in the Baltimore-Washington area. Siddiqui’s family contends that her trip to Baltimore was for the sole purpose of finding a job, and that if she did open a post office box it was for the replies she hoped to get.

According to the article, “Months later, the FBI would make its most devastating claim against Siddiqui. It was still dark on the morning of March 1, 2003, when Pakistani authorities arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a known September 11 mastermind, at a Karachi safe house. The arrest made news around the world. It also presaged the extraordinary vanishing act of Aafia Siddiqui and her three small children.” It seems Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave up Aafia’s name as being a major Al Qaeda operative.” However, one of her defenders says Siddiqui’s identity was likely stolen. “Aafia was, I think, probably a pretty naive and trusting person and my guess is it would be pretty easy for somebody who wanted to steal an identity to just steal it.” About a month after his capture in the spring of 2003, she disappeared. The last her mother remembers, Siddiqui was piling herself and her children, then seven, five, and six months old, into a taxi headed to the railway station, the first step of what she said was her planned trip to visit an uncle in Islamabad. Her mother said goodbye to her daughter and grandchildren - and hasn’t seen them since.

“What happened to Aafia Siddiqui and her children that day is anyone’s guess. Siddiqui’s mother, Ismet, claims that a few days after Siddiqui’s disappearance, a man on a motorcycle arrived at her house in a leather suit and helmet and told her Aafia was being held and that she should keep quiet if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again. A report in the Pakistani Urdu press said that Siddiqui and her kids had been seen being picked up by Pakistani authorities and taken into custody. Even a spokesman for Pakistan’s Interior Ministry and two unnamed US officials confirmed this in the press. Several days later, however, Pakistani and American officials mysteriously backtracked, saying it was unlikely that Siddiqui was in custody. Ismet, hysterical, decided to board a plane to the United States in an attempt to find her daughter. When official-looking men greeted her at JFK Airport in New York, she thought they were there to help her find her daughter,” according to the article. Siddiqui’s sister Fowzia picked up Ismet and took her back to Baltimore. There was a knock at the door. It was the FBI serving a subpoena for Ismet Siddiqui to come to Boston to testify before a grand jury. In the days after Ismet was served the subpoena, she, Fowzia, and her son Mohammed all spoke at length with agents from the FBI and US Attorney’s Office. Aafia Siddiqui had been missing for more than a year when the FBI put her photographs on its website. It was May 26, and Ashcroft and Mueller told the press that Siddiqui was an Al Qaeda facilitator.

According to the article, the “rumour among well-informed Pakistanis” is that she is dead. If Siddiqui was captured, why would she be killed? Generally, terrorism suspects are captured and paraded before the press to show that the government is doing its job. The fact that Siddiqui has been missing so long does not bode well for her reappearance. And the children? “One thing is clear so far,” Muzamal Suherwardy says. “Where she is, her children are there with her.”

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

Some more info on Dr. Aafia.

 

[roadrunner]

^^Isn't your article saying also that they haven't got a clue what happened to her?

What would the FBI want with a 2 month old baby, and a couple of kids under the age of 5 by the way? You can't just pick and choose speculative news stories that provide no proof (though one does not doubt she and her kids have disappeared).