Pakistani woman accused of aiding Al Qaeda operatives appears in court

The case against Aafia Siddiqui, who has been missing since 2003, raises questions about illegal detention centers across Pakistan.

By Huma Yusuf

from the August 7, 2008 edition

Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national and MIT graduate wanted for questioning by the FBI in relation to terrorism cases, appeared in a New York court on Tuesday after being charged with attempting to kill US soldiers. Before being taken into custody in Afghanistan last month, Ms. Siddiqui was last seen in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2003. Her reappearance raises questions about the Pakistan government's practice of illegally detaining terror suspects in secret security centers.

Although Siddiqui was accused of having links to the Al Qaeda leadership and has been wanted for questioning by the FBI since 2003, she appeared in court on charges of attempted killing, reports the Times Online.

The US Government alleges that Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani mother of three with a biology degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in behavioural neuroscience from Brandeis University, near Boston, is married to the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who claims to have organised the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.

She is charged with attempted murder and assault for allegedly trying to kill an American interrogator in a gun battle after she was arrested outside an Afghan government compound with a handbag full of chemicals and information on chemical, biological and radiological weapons, as well as descriptions of "various landmarks" in the United States.

Siddiqui was arrested in the Ghazni Province of Afghanistan, outside the governor's compound there, by the Afghanistan National Police. The next day, Siddiqui attacked US soldiers and FBI agents preparing to question her, reports ABC News.

The day after her arrest by Afghani authorities on July 17th, Siddiqui was shot twice in the torso, US officials said, when she grabbed a US soldier's M-4 carbine and attempted to shoot another officer as a team of US soldiers and FBI agents prepared to question her. A US interpreter threw off her aim when he pushed the gun. She then was shot twice with a .9 millimeter handgun, authorities said. According to the US Government, despite her wounds, she shouted that she "wanted to kill Americans," and struggled with her captors before they subdued her.

Siddiqui's family maintains that she has been illegally detained by Pakistani security agencies for the past five years, reports the BBC.

Rights groups say she has spent the last five years in secret US jails....

According to her family, Ms Siddiqui has not been seen since returning to Pakistan on a visit from the US in 2003....

At a news conference on Tuesday in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, Ms Siddiqui's sister said: "Aafia was tortured for five years until one day US authorities announce that they have found her in Afghanistan."

Fauzia Siddiqui said her sister had spent "five years in detention" despite being "innocent of any crime".

Ms Siddiqui's family deny she has connections to al-Qaeda.

The BBC reports that the FBI and Pakistan government in 2003 denied having anything to do with Siddiqui's disappearance. She was never officially listed as wanted by any American or Pakistani agency. Even after her reappearance in Afghanistan, the US government maintains that her whereabouts have remained unknown.

Human rights groups say that Siddiqui is only one of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Pakistanis who have been illegally detained in secret security centers where they are tortured and forced to confess to terrorism. In June, the Asian Human Rights Commission reported that 52 illegal detention centers maintained by various security agencies had been identified across Pakistan.

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has collected details of detention and torture centres in Pakistan, where missing persons are held for long periods of time in order to force them to confess their involvement in terrorist and sabotage activities....

Many of the missing persons have testified in courts and to the media that they were kept in the custody by the army and that they were tortured.

Military intelligence (MI), Inter Service Intelligence (ISI), Federal Intelligence Agency (FIA), Pakistan Rangers, and the Frontier Constabulary (FC) are the main agencies who are keeping persons incommunicado and who torture them to confess their involvement in anti-state activities....

There still remain several thousands of persons who have been missing since 2001 and the seemingly callous attitude of the government is creating a sense of depression and disappointment in the people.

In a major national crisis in November 2007, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf purged the Supreme Court and deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, along with several other key judges, after facing pressure to reveal the fate of "Pakistan's disappeared." According to Dawn, a Pakistani English-language daily, Chief Justice Chaudhry had demanded that the government produce illegal detainees in court and convened a three-member bench to hear pleas for the recovery of missing persons.

Since coming to power in February 2008, Pakistan's new coalition government has not pursued the issue of Pakistan's "enforced disappeared" and coalition parties have yet to agree on the best manner in which to reinstate the judges deposed by Mr. Musharraf last year. In June, Amnesty International released a new report on Pakistanis believed to be in illegal detention and called for the government to reinstate the judges who were concerned with investigating this human rights violation.

On Tuesday, the same day that Siddiqui appeared in court in New York, leaders of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) met to discuss the possible impeachment of President Musharraf and agree on a timeline for the reinstatement of deposed Supreme Court judges. While the coalition leaders were able to agree that action should be taken against Musharraf, any decision regarding the judges was postponed, reports Dawn.

According to insiders, PPP leaders had succeeded in persuading the PML-N not to insist on reinstatement of the deposed judges before the removal of President Musharraf and said that his removal would help the government to fulfil its promise about the restoration of the judiciary.

The two sides, they said, agreed that President Musharraf was hindering the judges' reinstatement and after his removal from the office, the judges would have no objection to take a fresh oath under the Constitution.

According to the BBC, the Pakistani government did, however, initiate an effort to return Siddiqui to Pakistan before her trial commences in New York. Although her lawyer has asked that Siddiqui's case be dismissed, she faces 20 years in prison on each charge if found guilty.

A statement from Pakistan's foreign ministry said that embassy staff in Washington are seeking consular access to Ms Siddiqui and the government is "committed to bringing back all Pakistani detainees".

"Our efforts in this regard will continue," the statement said.