Kabul, 15 Sept. (AKI) - The 12-year-old son of a Pakistani woman facing charges in the United States for her alleged links to Al-Qaeda has been handed over to Pakistani officials by Afghan authorities.
Muhammad Ahmed has been in custody since July, when his mother, Aafia Siddiqui, was detained outside the governor's house in the central Afghan province of Ghazni.
According to the Pakistani government, the Afghan Ministry of Home Affairs handed the boy to Pakistani Ambassador, Asif Durrani, in Kabul on Monday.
The boy's mother, Aafia Siddiqui, who is suspected of links to Al-Qaeda militants, was first taken to a US military base and then flown to New York where she faces charges of attempted murder.
Siddiqui, 36, is currently facing trial charged with attempting to kill American soldiers and FBI agents in a police station in Afghanistan
But human rights groups say she has spent the last five years in secret US jails.
Siddiqui's family have repeatedly said that she was held by US authorities in the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
According to Pakistan's GeoNews one of her three children had already died while there was no information about her daughter and whether she would be handed over to Pakistani officials.
Muhammad Ahmed was expected to be sent to Pakistan on the first available flight.
Above, BBC report on Aafia Siddiqui that includes scenes from the press conference with members of her family in Pakistan that is referenced below. I'm glad the BBC had the temerity to show both sides of the issue, but I'm appalled at the dramatically propagandistic "swooping camera" effect over the black and white photo of Siddiqui.
From MidEast Youth blog: More than 5 years ago, Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neurologist and mother of three was accused without evidence by the U.S government to have links with Al Qaeda (don't we all?)
Since 9/11 her life and the lives of many innocent Arabs, Muslims, Afghans and Pakistanis within the USA changed for the worse, when the USA began shamelessly discriminating, arresting, and even torturing innocent civilians under the false premise of "national security." Innocent people were undergoing severe torture simply for being "suspects" of terrorism.
According to a BBC article from earlier this month:
Research at the time refused to turn up anything on the status of Aafia Siddiqui - she was not listed as wanted by any federal or Pakistani agency.
At that point, it seemed she had vanished off the face of the earth.
Siddiqui comes from a very well established and educated family, and from what I have been reading, she is seemingly open minded. She even wanted her children to be raised and educated in the USA, which led to disputes with her husband, also a Pakistani who was arrested and questioned by the FBI for buying goggles and some military manuals. Here is her familial background:
Her brother is an architect based in Houston, while Fauzia [her sister] is a neurologist who used to work at Mount Sinai hospital in New York.
Aafia Siddiqui went to school in Karachi and graduated with a biology degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.
Keep in mind that the claims below are nothing but that; baseless claims, and has yet to be evidenced by something other than FBI gossip. Comments within brackets are my own:
In 2004 then-FBI director Robert Mueller announced at a press conference that Aafia Siddiqui was wanted for questioning.
She was later named as part of an alleged al-Qaeda diamond smuggling operation in Liberia. [Because an established neurologist with an MIT degree and three children has enough free time on her hands to organize terrorist movements in Liberia.] Publications such as Newsweek quoted the FBI as saying this was to finance al-Qaeda's biological and chemical weapons programme.
After that, her name remained on the list of disappeared - until she surfaced last month in Afghanistan in US military custody.
[...]
"It is always believed one is innocent until proven guilty, not the other way round," her sister, Fauzia, told reporters in Karachi on Tuesday.
She added that every time she had met US officials, they had said they had never formally accused Aafia Siddiqui of being a terrorist [but arrested and tortured her anyways!]
The article concludes with what is pretty much her only crime:
The answer may lie in her relationship with the family of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Aafia Siddiqui is said to have married Ali Abd'al Aziz Ali, one of his nephews following her divorce. Although her family denies this, the BBC has been able to confirm it from security sources and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family.
It is an open secret in Karachi, that any member of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family deemed to be "a 1% threat to US security" is in American custody.
That may be the only "crime" that Aafia Siddiqui has committed.
No evidence of anything else but a romantic link. No record of terrorism or abuse. No proof of her "terrorist activities" whatsoever. She is from an educated family, she has never harmed the USA, she has never committed a crime, and her only supposed link to "terrorism" is her marriage to a "nephew" of whom the USA considers to be a terrorist.
From cageprisoner.com: "July 18th 2008. Ghazni, Afghanistan . This video, obtained by Cageprisoners shows the media conference following the 'arrest' of a woman and a teenager identified by Afghan police as Saliha and Ali Ihsan. The US allege that this is Aafia Siddiqui and her 12 year old son, Ahmad.
"Aafia Siddiqui was extradited to the US on 4th August 2008 on charges of attempted murder and assault. She denies the charges and claims to have been held in US custody since her disappearance in March 2003. Her son Ahmad remains in Afghan custody. The whereabouts of her two other children, missing for 5 years remain unknown."
From MuslimMatters.org: Sr. Aafia's bail hearing has been postponed to September 3. Please make dua' that she be released, and please keep her and her three children in mind and your dua's as you read this story.
A new chapter in the long and painful saga of the "War on Terror" has been revealed to the public. The facts are murky, the details impossible to confirm.
While there are several possibilities, there is one that most will find almost impossible to believe. We are not ready to believe that Dr. Aafia is a star terrorist- a claim that is ironically being pushed by the US Government and not denied by Al-Qaeda. Why? The answer lies in each group's malicious agenda.
Below is the text of a response in the comments section of the above-linked article from Maryann Hassan that succinctly points out the problems with the case against Aafia Siddiqui.
Aafia disappeared in March 2003 - the FBI and Pakistani officials initially admitted she was in custody. A few weeks later they retracted this. There was no news of her whereabouts until August 2008. Her family were meanwhile threatened and told to keep quiet and not pursue the case - why do this if the intelligence agencies had nothing to hide; if Aafia was, as they now claim, lying low and hiding in Pakistan for five years?
In that time period we have reports from several detainees held in Bagram of a woman prisoner held there between 2002-2005. We have been told she is Pakistani, appearing to be in her 40's, that she was abused. The screams of this woman were heard by other prisoners. Her prisoner no. was 650. The Red Cross privately confirmed to Moazzam Begg, ex Gtmo detainee, that a woman had been held in Bagram in 2003 and they had met her. The US denied that there was any prisoner 650 or any woman in Bagram but in recent weeks they have backtracked and said there was a woman held there but she does not match the description of Aafia Siddiqui.
Does it really sound plausible that after there is international uproar following the press conference with Yvonne Ridley and Saghir Hussain in Pakistan, when the Pakistani courts file a habeas petition, ordering that Aafia be brought before the court, that suddenly, after five years when the pressure mounts, she conveniently turns up in Afghanistan, outside the house of the Governor of Ghazni, with dangerous chemical substances in her purse, anarchist manuals on explosives, plots about attacking landmarks in New York? That some woman rang the Afghan police and said that there is this woman about to perform a suicide bombing outside the governor's house? If this is a woman the FBI have been lookign for, for five years, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to be in such a place (and to bring your son along too)?
Does it sound plausible that they would present a detainee in Afghan custody to the media in a press conference the day they are arrested (unprecedented)?
Does it sound plausible that within days they would extradiate a foreign national from Afghan custody to the US and charge them in a civilian court (unprecedented)?
Is it not strange that in the media we had reports that the Afghan did not wnat to give her to the US and an argument ensued; in some cases they said this was the cause of her being shot (caught in the crossfire). That later the governor of Ghazni backtracked and said there was no argument?
Is it credible that the US and Afghans would keep a woman with all these explosives and bomb plots on her "unsecured" - not shackled, not handcuffed, not treated like all t he other detainees in US and Afghan custody? That she would be conveniently hiding behind a curtain when FBI officials came into the room - not knowing she was there?
Is it plausible they'd put the weapon down right next to the curtain and she'd be able to pick it up and shoot at them?
Aafia is 35-40kg, extremely frail - is it feasible she'd be able to shoot and struggle with six male US soldiers as they claim?
They say Aafia is so devout and yet they claim she shouted at the US soldiers "get the f*** out of here"?
We then on the other hand have the word of our sister Aafia that she has been held in custody "for years" by the US; that she has been held in Bagram; that she has been, in the words of her lawyer after meeting with her, "horrendously abused... physically and psychologically". We have the court appointed lawyer saying she has all the signs of PTSD. We have her shaking her head in court, denying the allegations against her. We know she is very disturbed and distraught, not knowing the welfare and whereabouts of her children.
And if Aafia had been in hiding for years, and had not been in US custody, then where are her children?
Can anyone really give credence to the US' version of events?
From AltMuslim: It may be all quiet on the Western front, but apparently it's not that relevant. Recently, two ghost detainees, who disappeared in Pakistan in March 2003, conveniently reappeared last month in Afghanistan where they were promptly arrested by American officials.
The first detainee, Aafia Siddiqui, is a 36-year-old Pakistani national and MIT PhD graduate, now being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. The second is her 12-year-old American son - her eldest child - still being held in Afghanistan. Her two younger children (also American citizens) also disappeared with her in 2003, but their whereabouts are still unknown. The youngest was only 6-months at the time.
Elaine Sharp, Aafia's lawyer, interviewed her last week and says it is certain that she was held in Bagram Airbase, Afghanistan. They had to talk through the food slot at the bottom of Aafia's cell door for the entire 3 hour session.
"The whole situation made it impossible for me to meet properly with my client," says Sharp. "The abuse was horrendous. It was physical, as well as psychological. It was torture." In early 2003, the FBI announced it wanted to take Aafia Siddiqui in "for questioning," though they admitted they had "no information indicating this individual is connected to specific terrorist activities."
A few weeks later, Aafia and her three children were picked up by Pakistani police and were not seen or heard from again for the next five years. The FBI, however, continued to list her as "wanted," denying that she was held by Pakistan - or any other country. In May 2004, then-Attorney General Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller accused Aafia of being an al-Qaeda member, claiming she was still at large.
Their evidence: While in America, Aafia opened a PO box. Also, her bank account displayed suspicious behavior. That is to say, she made automatic withdrawals to a few Muslim charities. However, more puzzling than her disappearance is Aafia's reemergence. Why would the US concoct a scenario that would bring Aafia out of total oblivion and back into the public eye? To give her a chance at justice?
On the one hand, human rights groups have been pressuring the US to bring an end to the captivity of the "Grey Lady of Bagram," Prisoner 650, the woman whose screams and agony have haunted the hearts of released Bagram prisoners (until now, the US denies holding any women at the airbase). Perhaps Aafia is the Grey Lady, finally given face and name.
