Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aafia_Siddiqui
Aafia Siddiqui
| Aafia Siddiqui | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Native name | عافیہ صدیقی |
| Born | 2 March 1972 Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan |
| Nationality | Pakistani[1][2] |
| Alma mater | NED Public School (Matric) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS) Brandeis University (PhD) |
| Height | 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m)[3] |
| Weight | 90 lb (41 kg) (at time of arraignment)[3] |
| Board member of | Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching (President)[4][5] |
| Criminal charge | Attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon |
| Criminal penalty | Convicted; sentenced to 86 years in prison[6][7] |
| Criminal status | Held in the FMC Carswell, Fort Worth, Texas, United States[6] |
| Spouse(s) |
Amjad Mohammed Khan (1995 – 21 October 2002) (divorced)
allegedly Ammar al-Baluchi, also known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali (February 2003 – present)[citation needed] |
| Children | 3 including Mohammad Ahmed |
Aafia Siddiqui (/ˈɑːfiə 
listen); Urdu: عافیہ صدیقی; born 2 March 1972) is an MIT-trained Pakistanineuroscientist, who in 2010 was convicted of seven counts of attempted murder and assault of US personnel and is serving her 86-year sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.
listen); Urdu: عافیہ صدیقی; born 2 March 1972) is an MIT-trained Pakistanineuroscientist, who in 2010 was convicted of seven counts of attempted murder and assault of US personnel and is serving her 86-year sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.
Siddiqui was born in Pakistan to a Deobandi Muslim family.[3] In 1990 she went to study in the United States and obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University in 2001.[8] She returned to Pakistan for a time following the 9/11 attacks and again in 2003 during the war in Afghanistan. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad reportedly named her a courier and financier for Al-Qaeda, after his arrest and interrogation, and she was placed on the FBI Seeking Information - Terrorism list; she remains the only woman to have been featured on the list.[9][10][11] Around this time she and her her three children disappeared in Pakistan.[9]
Five years later she reappeared in Ghazni, Afghanistan, was arrested by Afghan police and held for questioning by the FBI. While in custody, Siddiqui told the FBI she had gone into hiding but later disavowed her testimony and stated she had been abducted and imprisoned. Supporters believe she was held captive at Bagram Air Force Base as a ghost prisoner—charges the US government denies.
While in custody in Ghazni, police found documents and notes for making bombs along with containers of sodium cyanide in her possession. During the second day in custody she allegedly shot at visiting U.S. FBI and Army personnel with an M4 carbine one of the interrogators had placed on the floor by his feet. She was shot in the torso the next when the warrant officer returned fire with a 9-millimeter pistol. She was hospitalized, and treated; then extradited and flown to the US where in September 2008 she was indicted on charges of assault and attempted murder of a US soldier in the police station in Ghazni—charges she denied. She was convicted on 3 February 2010 and later sentenced to 86 years in prison.
Her case has been called a "flashpoint of Pakistani-American tensions",[12] and "one of the most mysterious in a secret war dense with mysteries".[13] In Pakistan her arrest and conviction was seen by the public as an "attack on Islam and Muslims", and occasioned large protests throughout the country;[14] while in the US, she was considered by some to be especially dangerous as "one of the few alleged Al Qaeda associates with the ability to move about the United States undetected, and the scientific expertise to carry out a sophisticated attack".[9] She has been termed "Lady al-Qaeda" by a number of media organizations due to her alleged affiliation with Islamists.[15][16][17]Pakistani news media called the trial a "farce",[14] while other Pakistanis labeled this reaction "knee-jerk Pakistani nationalism". The Pakistani Prime Minister at that time, Yousaf Raza Gillani, and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, promised to push for her release.[14]
ISIS have offered to trade her for prisoners on three separate occasions, with James Foley for Siddiqui, Bowe Bergdahl and a 26-year-old American woman, kidnapped in 2013.[18]
Contents
[hide]- 1Background
- 2Biography
- 3Criminal complaint and trial
- 4Reactions
- 5See also
- 6References
- 7Books and journal articles
- 8External links
Background[edit]
Siddiqui came to the United States on a student visa in 1990 for undergraduate and graduate education and eventually settled in Massachusetts. While completing the requirements for her Masters and her PhD in neuroscience in less than four years,[8][19] she found time to marry and start a family, and volunteer with the Muslim Student Association and Al-Kifah Refugee Center, proselytizing, urging greater religious observance among Muslims,[3] doing charity work,[3] and urging support for jihad in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Bosnia. Immediately following the 9/11 attacks she returned to Pakistan but then returned to America where her husband was completing his board exams. Later she divorced her husband and in March 2003 disappeared with her three young children, shortly after the arrest in Pakistan of her second husband's uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged chief planner of the September 11 attacks.[20][21][9]Khalid Mohammed reportedly mentioned Siddiqui's name while he was being interrogated,[22] and shortly thereafter she was added to the FBI Seeking Information – War on Terrorism list.[9][23]
In May 2004, the FBI named Siddiqui as one of its seven Most Wanted Terrorists.[9] Her whereabouts were reported to have been unknown until she was arrested in July 2008 in Afghanistan.[20] Upon her arrest, the Afghan police reported she was carrying in her purse handwritten notes and a computer thumb drivecontaining recipes for conventional bombs and weapons of mass destruction, instructions on how to make machines to shoot down US drones, descriptions of New York City landmarks with references to a mass casualty attack, and two pounds of sodium cyanide in a glass jar.[24][25][26]
Siddiqui was shot and severely wounded at the police compound the following day. Her American interrogators said she grabbed a rifle from behind a curtain and began shooting at them.[27] Siddiqui's denied this[28] and said she simply stood up to see who was on the other side of the curtain and startled the soldiers, one of whom then shot her.[29] She received medical attention for her wounds at Bagram Air Base and was flown to the US[30] to be charged in a New York City federal court with attempted murder and armed assault on US officers and employees.[21] After receiving psychological evaluations and therapy, the judge declared her mentally fit to stand trial.[29][31] Siddiqui interrupted the trial proceedings with vocal outbursts and was ejected from the courtroom several times.[24] The jury convicted her on all charges in February 2010.[27][32][33]
The prosecution argued for a that would require a life term;[6] Siddiqui's lawyers requested a 12-year sentence, arguing that she suffers from mental illness.[34][35]The charges against her stemmed from the shooting, and she was not charged with any terrorism-related offences.[36][37]
Amnesty International monitored the trial for fairness.[38] In a letter to Barack Obama, four British Parliamentarians (Lord Ahmed, Lord Sheikh, Lord Patel, and MP Mohammad Sarwar), protested the arrest, calling it a violation of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[39][40] Many of Siddiqui's supporters, including some international human rights organisations, claimed that Siddiqui was not an extremist and that she and her young children were illegally detained, interrogated, and tortured by Pakistani intelligence, US authorities, or both, during her five-year disappearance.[20] The US and Pakistan governments have denied all such claims.[25][41]
Biography[edit]
Family and early life[edit]
Aafia Siddiqui was born in Karachi, Pakistan, to Muhammad Salay Siddiqui, a British-trained neurosurgeon, and Ismet (née Faroochi), an Islamic teacher, social worker and charity volunteer.[9][42] She belongs to the Urdu-speaking Muhajir, Deobandi community of Karachi. She was raised in an observant muslim household, although her parents combined devotional Islam with their resolve to understand and use Western technological advances in science.[43]
Ismet Siddiqui was prominent in political and religious circles, teaching classes on Islam wherever she lived, founding a United Islamic Organization, and serving as a member of Pakistan's parliament.[44] Her support for strict Islam in the face of feminist opposition to his Hudood Ordinances drew the attention of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq who appointed her to a Zakat Council.[3][45] Siddiqui is the youngest of three siblings.[9] Her brother, Muhammad, studied to become an architect in Houston, Texas,[9] while her sister, Fowzia, is a Harvard-trained neurologist who worked at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore[46] and taught at Johns Hopkins University before she returned to Pakistan.[14]
Aafia attended school in Zambia until the age of eight and finished her primary and secondary schooling in Karachi.[47] During her childhood Aafia experienced the "fever for jihad" in Pakistan and enthusiasm for helping the mujahideen who were fighting the Soviet Union following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As a young girl, she used to knock on doors in her neighborhood and pass out religious pamphlets with her mother.[48]
Undergraduate education[edit]
Siddiqui moved to Houston, Texas, on a student visa in 1990, joining her brother who was studying architecture.[25][49] She attended the University of Houstonwhere friends and family described her interests as limited to religion and schoolwork. She avoided movies, novels and television, except for the news.[50] After three semesters, she transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she was offered a full scholarship.[9][46]
In 1992, as a sophomore, Siddiqui won a $5000 Carroll L. Wilson Award for her research proposal "Islamization in Pakistan and its Effects on Women".[9][51] She returned to Pakistan to interview architects of the Islamization and the Hudood Laws, including Taqi Usmani, the spiritual adviser to her family. As a junior, she received a $1,200 City Days fellowship through MIT's program to help clean up Cambridge elementary school playgrounds.[9] While she initially had a triple major in biology, anthropology, and archaeology at MIT, she graduated in 1995 with a BS in biology.[52][53]
At MIT Siddiqui lived in the all-female McCormick Hall. She continued to be active in charity work and proselytising. Her fellow MIT students described her as being religious, which was not unusual at the time, but not a fundamentalist, one of them saying that she was "just nice and soft-spoken."[46] She joined the Muslim Students' Association,[9][54] and a fellow Pakistani recalls her recruiting for association meetings and distributing pamphlets.[36] Siddiqui began doing volunteer work for the Al Kifah Refugee Center after returning from Pakistan. Al Kifah included members who assassinated Jewish ultranationalist Meir Kahaneand helped Ramzi Yousef with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[55][9][25][52] She was known for her effectiveness in shaming audiences into contributing to jihad[10][56] and the only woman known to have regularly raised money for Al-Kifah.[57] Through the student association she met several committed Islamists, including Suheil Laher, its imam, who had publicly advocated Islamization and jihad before 9/11.[3] Journalist Deborah Scroggins suggested that through the association's contacts Siddiqui may have been drawn into the world of terrorism:
Aafia's committement to al-Kifah showed no sign of dimming when the connection between its Jersey City branch and the World Trade Center bombing became apparent. When the Pakistani government helped the US arrest and extradite Ramzi Yousef for his role in the bombing (where Yousef hoped to kill 250,000 Americans by knocking one WTC tower over into the other)[58][59] an outraged Siddiqui circulated the announcement with a scornful note deriding Pakistan for "officially" joining "the typical gang of our contemporary Muslim governments", closing her email with a quote from the Quran warning Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends.[60] She wrote three guides for teaching Islam, expressing the hope in one: "that our humble effort continues ... and more and more people come to the [religion] of Allah until America becomes a Muslim land."[9] She also took a 12-hour pistol training course at the Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club,[61] mailed US military manuals to Pakistan and moved from her apartment after the FBI agents visited the university looking for her.[62]
Marriage, graduate school, and work[edit]
In 1995 she agreed to a marriage arranged by her mother to Karachi-born anesthesiologist Amjad Mohammed Khan just out of medical school and whom she had never seen.[3][25] The marriage ceremony was conducted over the telephone.[30] Khan then came to the US, and the couple lived first in Lexington, Massachusetts, and then in the Mission Hill neighbourhood of Roxbury, Boston, where he worked as an anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital.[9][25]She gave birth to a son, Muhammad Ahmed, in 1996, and to a daughter, Mariam Bint-e Muhammad, in 1998.[3][63]
Siddiqui studied cognitive neuroscience at Brandeis University.[22] In early 1999, while she was a graduate student, she taught the General Biology Laboratory course.[25] She received her PhD in 2001 after completing her dissertation on learning through imitation;[3] Separating the Components of Imitation.[64][65] She co-authored a journal article on selective learning that was published in 2003.[66] One incident that caused controversy was her presentation of a paper on fetal alcohol syndrome where she concluded that science showed why God had forbidden alcohol in the Quran. When told by some teachers this was inappropriate, she complained bitterly of discrimination to the associate dean of graduate studies, threatening to "open a can of worms".[67]
After receiving her PhD, she told one of her advisers she planned to devote herself to her family rather than a career. She began translating biographies of Arab Afghan shahid (jihad fighters who had been killed) written by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam ("the Godfather of Jihad").[68] and became more strict in her religion, wearing a niqāb—a black veil that covered everything but her eyes[19]—and avoiding any music—even background music at science exhibits.[68]
In 1999 while living in Boston, Siddiqui founded the Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching as a nonprofit organisation. She was the organisation's president, her husband treasurer, and her sister resident agent.[4][5][64][nb 1] She attended a mosque outside the city where she stored copies of the Quran and other Islamic literature for distribution.[69] She also co-founded the Dawa Resource Center, which offered faith-based services to prison inmates.[63]
Divorce, al-Qaeda allegations, and remarriage[edit]
Tensions began to arise in her marriage (caused by her overwhelming devotion to activism and jihad according to husband Khan).[70] Siddiqui temporarily moved away from her husband after her husband threw a baby bottle at her and she had to be taken to the emergency room to stitch up her lip.[71] In the summer of 2001, the couple moved to Malden, Massachusetts.[72]
According to her husband Khan, after the September 11 attacks, Siddiqui was adamant that the family leave the US, saying that their lives were in danger if they remained.[70] Once back in Pakistan, Siddiqui demanded that the family move to the border with Afghanistan and Khan work as a medic to help the Taliban mujahideen in their fight against America.[25][29] Khan was reluctant to disobey his parents who opposed this move, and uncertain if he had reached the stature traditionally thought necessary to wage jihad.[73] Siddiqui agreed to return to him in the US in January 2002 after he agreed to her conditions including that he join her in Islamic activities.[74] She began home schooling her children.[75]
By now the FBI was questioning Aafia's former professors and other associates.[76] In May 2002, the FBI began questioning Siddiqui and her husband regarding their purchase over the internet of $10,000 worth of night vision equipment, body armour, and military manuals including The Anarchist's Arsenal, Fugitive, Advanced Fugitive, and How to Make C-4.[29][30][46] Khan claimed that these were for hunting and camping expeditions. (He later told authorities he purchased them to please Siddiqui.) The couple made an appointment to talk to the FBI again in a few weeks but Suddiqui insisted the family leave for Pakistan (according to Khan),[77] and on 26 June 2002, the couple and their children returned to Karachi.[3][21][30]
In August 2002, Khan alleged that Siddiqui was abusive and manipulative throughout their seven years of marriage; he suspected she was involved in extremist activities.[70] Khan went to Siddiqui's parents' home, announced his intention to divorce her, and argued with her father.[9][46] Shortly after, Siddiqui's father died of a heart attack, an event blamed on Khan and the marriage difficulties by his ex-in-laws, further poisoning his relations with them.[78]
In September 2002, Siddiqui gave birth to Suleman, the last of their three children.[9] Following an attempted and failed reconciliation and signing of a divorce document shortly after, the couple never met each other again.[79]
The couple's divorce was finalised on 21 October 2002.[9][29] According to her statements to the FBI, it was at this point that her connections with Al-Qaeda began in earnest.[80]
In February 2003, Siddiqui married Ammar al-Baluchi, an accused al-Qaeda member and a nephew of al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed(KSM),[20][25][81] in Karachi.[20][25][30][64][81][82][44][83] While her family denies she married al-Baluchi, Pakistani and US intelligence sources,[84] a psychologist for the defense during her 2009 trial,[85] and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family all confirm that the marriage took place.[36]
Conspiring with KSM[edit]
Siddiqui left for the US on 25 December 2002, informing her ex-husband Amjad that she was looking for a job;[9] she returned on 2 January 2003.[21][9] Amjad later stated he was suspicious of her explanation as universities were on winter break.[70] The purpose of the trip was to assist Majid Khan in opening a post office box so that it could appear he was living in the US when he mailed his application for an INS travel document.[86] Khan was listed as a co-owner of the box.[3][44][46][81][87][20][29] The FBI alleged that Khan was an al-Qaeda operative. Siddiqui told the FBI that she agreed to open the post box and mail the application because he was a family friend.[86] The P.O. box key was later found in the possession of Uzair Paracha, who was convicted of providing material support to al-Qaeda.[9][88]
According to the US government, Khan was an operative for an Al-Qaeda cell led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad which planned to attack targets in the US, in the UK (on Heathrow airport) and inside Pakistan. In the US, C-4 plastic explosives[89] and other chemicals would be smuggled in under the cover of textile exports – 20 and 40 ft foot containers filled with women's and children's clothes.[90] The explosives would be used to bomb petrol stations, underground fuel storage tanks in Baltimore and chemicals to poison or destroy pumps to water treatment facilities.[91] A dummy import-export business run by Saifullah Paracha, (now residing at Guantánamo Bay) would import the explosives.[90]
According to the US government, Siddiqui's role was to "rent houses and provide administrative support for the operation". When she returned from Pakistan to the US in January 2003, it was (according to the charge) to help renew the American travel papers of Majid Khan, who would execute the bombing. Khan provided Siddiqui with money, photos and a completed application for an "asylum travel form" that "looked and functioned like a passport", (according to his testimony), and back in the US Siddiqui "opened a post office box in detainee's name, using her driver's licence information".[90]
The plot unraveled after Khan was arrested in Pakistan on 1 March 2003[92] and sent to Guantánamo. In America, another operative, Uzair Paracha, was arrested in possession of the post box key.[90] Defense attorneys note that testimony gathered by investigators "were likely to have been extracted under conditions of torture."[90] Her lawyer suggested she had been the victim of identity theft, while her sister Fowzia has maintained the post office box was intended for use in applying for jobs at American universities.[90] Charges were not brought against Siddiqui for the opening the post box and mailing the application in her trial.[90]
Khan (her ex-husband) was questioned by the FBI and released.[30]
Blood diamond allegations[edit]
According to a dossier prepared by UN investigators for the 9/11 Commission in 2004, Siddiqui, using the alias Fahrem or Feriel Shahin, was one of six alleged al-Qaeda members who bought $19 million worth of blood diamonds in Monrovia, Liberia, immediately prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks.[93] The diamonds were purchased because they were untraceable assets to be used for funding al-Qaeda operations.[3][9][46][94] The identification of Siddiqui was made three years after the incident by one of the go-betweens in the Liberian deal. Alan White, former chief investigator of the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Liberia, said she was the woman.[3][9][46][95] Siddiqui's lawyer maintained credit card receipts and other records showed that she was in Boston at the time.[9] FBI agent Dennis Lormel, who investigated terrorism financing, said the agency ruled out a specific claim that she had evaluated diamond operations in Liberia, though she remained suspected of money laundering.[29]
In early 2003, while Siddiqui was working at Aga Khan University in Karachi, she emailed a former professor at Brandeis and expressed interest in working in the US, citing lack of options in Karachi for women of her academic background.[3][30]
According to "a combination of US intelligence analysis and direct testimony by at least three senior al-Qaida figures", known as Guantánamo files, Siddiqui was an al-Qaeda operative.[12] The file included evidence from Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, (KSM) the al-Qaeda chief planner of the 11 September attacks, who was interrogated by the CIA (and subjected to waterboarding 183 times) after his arrest on 1 March 2003.[96][29][97] His confessions triggered a series of related arrests shortly thereafter,[9] and included naming Siddiqui.[96] On 25 March 2003, the FBI issued a global "wanted for questioning" alert for Siddiqui and her ex-husband, Khan.[9] Siddiqui was accused of being a "courier of blood diamonds and a financial fixer for al-Qaida".[98]
Disappearance[edit]
Aware that the FBI wanted her for questioning, she left her parents' house 30 March 2003 with her three children.[36][63] According to her parents, she was going to go to Islamabad to visit her uncle but never arrived.[3][30] Around March 25 the FBI put out a "worldwide alert" for Aafia and her ex-husband.[99]
Siddiqui's and her children's whereabouts and activities from March 2003 to July 2008 are a matter of dispute. Her supporters and the Pakistani government claim she was held as a prisoner by the US; the US government and others (including Suddiqui in her statements to the FBI immediately after her arrest) suggest she went into hiding with KSM's al-Baluchi family.
Starting 29 March, a "confusing series" of reports and denials of her arrest and detention appeared in Pakistan and the US.[100] On 1 April 2003, local newspapers reported and Pakistan interior ministry confirmed that a woman had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.[36] The Boston Globe described "sketchy" Pakistani news reports saying she had been detained for questioning by Pakistani authorities and the FBI.[63][96] However, a couple of days later, both the Pakistan government and the FBI publicly stated they were uninvolved in her disappearance.[36] Her sister Fauzia claimed Interior Minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat said that her sister had been released and would be returning home "shortly".[36]
In 2003–04, the FBI and the Pakistani government said Siddiqui was still at large.[30][101][102] On 26 May 2004, US Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference described her as among the seven "most wanted" al-Qaeda fugitives[96][103] and a "clear and present danger to the US".[96][104] Newsweek reported that she might be "the most immediately threatening suspect in the group".[105]
One day before the announcement, however, The New York Times cited the US Department of Homeland Security saying there were no current risks; American Democrats accused the Bush administration of attempting to divert attention from plummeting poll numbers and to push the failings of the Invasion of Iraq off the front pages.[106]
After her 2008 reappearance and arrest, Siddiqui told the FBI that she had at first gone into hiding with KSM's al-Baluchi clan (her lawyer later repudiated that statement)[10] and worked at the Karachi Institute of Technology in 2005, was in Afghanistan in 2007, and also spent time in Quetta, Pakistan, sheltered by various people.[20][25][107] She told the FBI she met with Mufti Abu Lubaba Shah Mansoor, and according to the FBI began had collected materials on viruses for biological warfare.[10][108] According to an intelligence official in the Afghan Ministry of the Interior, her son, Ahmed, who was with her when she was arrested, said he and Siddiqui had worked in an office in Pakistan collecting money for poor people.[25] He told Afghan investigators that on 14 August 2008 they had traveled by road from Quetta to Afghanistan.[14] An Afghan intelligence official said he believes that Siddiqui was working with Jaish-e-Mohammed (the "Army of Muhammad"), a Pakistani Islamic mujahedeen military group that fights in Kashmir and Afghanistan.[25]
According to her ex-husband Khan, after the global alert for her was issued, Siddiqui went into hiding and worked for al-Qaeda.[30][70][109] During her disappearance, Khan said he saw her at Islamabad airport in April 2003 as she disembarked from a flight with their son; he said he helped Inter-Services Intelligence identify her. He said he again saw her two years later, in a Karachi traffic jam.[29][30] Khan, who unsuccessfully sought custody of his son Ahmed and said most of the claims of Siddiqui's family in the Pakistani media relating to her and their children were one-sided and mostly false.[14][70]
In a signed affidavit,[14] Siddiqui's maternal uncle, Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi, stated that on 22 January 2008 she visited him in Islamabad[29][30] and told him she had been held by Pakistani agencies. Knowing he had worked in Afghanistan and made contact with the Taliban in 1999, she asked for his help to cross into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where she thought she would be safe.[29][30] He told her he was no longer in touch with them. He notified his sister, Siddiqui's mother, who came the next day to see her daughter. He said that Siddiqui stayed with them for two days.[110] Investigating the disappearance, a US journalist (Deborah Scroggins) reported that Geo TV presenter Hamid Mir informed her that friends of Siddiqui believed she had gone underground avoiding the FBI. Scroggins was also warned by Pakistanis with jihadist connections (including Khalid Khawaja) that she (Scroggins) might end up like Daniel Pearl (beheaded) if she attempted to pursue finding Siddiqui.[10][111]
Ahmed and Siddiqui reappeared in 2008.[25] Afghan authorities handed the boy over to his aunt in Pakistan in September 2008, who has prohibited the press from talking to him.[25][30] In April 2010, DNA identified a girl as Siddiqui's daughter, Mariyam.[112]
Alternative scenarios[edit]
When Siddiqui's ex-mother and father-in-law filed a custody suit against the Siddiqui family in an attempt to see their grandchildren (the Siddiqui family refused to talk to them), Siddiqui's mother claimed under oath the FBI and US Justice Department officials had informed her that "the minors are with the mother and are in safe condition," the opposite of what such officials had told her American lawyer in May of that year.[67][113] Siddiqui's sister and mother denied that she had any connections to al-Qaeda and claimed that the US held her secretly in Afghanistan. They pointed to comments by former Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, detainees who say Siddiqui had been at the prison while they were there.[96] Her sister said that Siddiqui had been raped, and tortured for five years.[114][115] According to journalist, Muslim convert, and former Taliban captive Yvonne Ridley, Siddiqui spent those years in solitary confinement at Bagram as "Prisoner 650". Six human rights groups, including Amnesty International, listed her as a possible ghost prisoner held by the US.[20][63] In early 2007 the Pakistan government started releasing more than a hundred people who had been listed as "missing".[116] the CIA reportedly detained up to 100 people at secret facilities.)[117] S.H. Faruqi, Siddiqui's uncle, reported that Siddiqui visited him in January 2008 telling him she had been imprisoned and tortured at Bagram Airfield for several years and released to serve as a double agent infiltrating extremist groups.[118] Siddiqui herself later claimed that she had been kidnapped by US intelligence and Pakistani intelligence.[20]
According to one Pakistani report, her mother claimed to have been warned by an unidentified man "not to make a fuss about her daughter's disappearance, if she wants safe recovery of her daughter," suggesting that either government intelligence services or "nexus of Pakistani and Arab jihadis" had hidden Siddiqui.[119][36]
Siddiqui has not explained clearly what happened to her other two children.[20] According to a psychiatric exam given while she was in custody, her story has alternated between claiming that the two youngest children were dead and that they were with her sister Fowzia.[64] She told one FBI agent that pursuing the cause of jihad had to take priority.[107] Khan said he believed that the missing children were in Karachi, either with or in contact with Siddiqui's family, and not in US detention.[14][70][120] He said that they were seen in her sister's house in Karachi and in Islamabad since 2003.[14][70][121]
In April 2010, Mariam was found outside the family house wearing a collar with the address of the family home. She was said to be speaking English. A Pakistani ministry official said the girl was believed to have been held captive in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2010.[122]
The US government said it had not held Siddiqui during that time frame and was unaware of her location from March 2003 until July 2008.[123] The mass of secret U.S. cables released in 2010 by Wikileaks included memos by the US Embassy in Islamabad Pakistan asking other US government departments whether Asfia had been in secret custody. One stated: “Bagram officials have assured us that they have not been holding Siddiqui for the last four years, as has been alleged.”[124]
The US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, stated that Siddiqui had not been in US custody "at any time" prior to July 2008.[30] The US Justice Department and the CIA denied the allegations, and Gregory Sullivan, a State Department spokesman, said: "For several years, we have had no information regarding her whereabouts whatsoever. It is our belief that she ... has all this time been concealed from the public view by her own choosing."[63] Assistant US Attorney David Raskin said in 2008 that US agencies found "zero evidence" that she was abducted, kidnapped or tortured in 2003. He added: "A more plausible inference is that she went into hiding because people around her started to get arrested, and at least two of those people ended up at Guantanamo Bay."[125]According to some U.S. officials, she went underground after the FBI alert for her was issued, and was at large working on behalf of al-Qaeda.[30][109] The Guardian cited an anonymous senior Pakistani official suggesting Siddiqui may have abandoned the militant cause.[30]
Another theory was that the CIA and FBI did not have the ability to capture suspects in Pakistan (where most people were passionately anti-American), only the ISI had the ability to capture Siddiqui, and while they may have known how to get her or even have her in custody, they were not "ready to hand her over",[10][126]whatever reward the Americans offered.
Alleged danger[edit]
Siddiqui was on the CIA's list of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists it was authorized to "kill or capture".[10][127] According to Rolf Mowqatt-Larssen of the Counterterrorism Center at the CIA, what set Siddiqui apart from other terrorism suspects was "her combination of high intelligence (including general scientific know-how), religious zeal, and years of experience in the United States."
"So far they have had very few people who have been able to come to the U.S. and thrive. Aafia is different. She knows about U.S. immigration procedures and visas. She knows how to enroll in American educational institutions. She can open bank accounts and transfer money. She knows how things work here. She could have been very useful to them simply for her understanding of the U.S." [10][128]
While the CIA's sources of information could not determine her exact role in al-Qaeda, "[s]he was always in the picture. Connections between her and other people in FBI was looking at surfaced in just about every al-Qaeda investigation with a U.S. angle. She was always on our radar."[10][129]
According to the FBI, in her testimony to them she had collected materials on viruses for biological warfare and one of her projects was finding a way to infect America's poultry supplies with an antibody that would allow chickens to pass salmonella on to humans more easily.[10][108] (She later destroyed her work after suspecting Abu Lubab was hoping to double cross her and turn into the United States authorities.[10][130]
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