Saturday, August 16, 2008

Where are Aafia Siddiqui's Children?

The bare bones of the situation are these: on April 30, 2003, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui left her mother's home in Karachi, along with her three children, Maryam, Ahmad and Suleman, and vanished. It is suspected that the Pakistani government apprehended the four, at the behest of the U.S. government. For at least two years human rights organizations, among them Amnesty International, have posited that she was in U.S. custody, detained at a black site. Questions have been raised that she might be Prisoner 650, a woman known to have been detained and tortured at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Last month, Dr. Siddiqui ((her doctorate is in neuroscience from Brandeis University) was arrested by Afghan police, along with her son Ahmad. According to Reuters, while the U.S. Justice Department claims she tried to shoot the soldiers and interpreter who came to question her at the police station, Afghan police told Reuters that the U.S. troops tried to disarm the police when they refused to release her to them, and that Siddiqui was shot when she approached the soldiers, reportedly because they suspected she had explosives on her.

Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesman Muhammad Sadiq says that the U.S. has detained her children; the Pakistan government has called upon the U.S. State Department for their release and repatriation.

WHERE are these children? WHERE have they spent the past five years? WHAT does the U.S. government know about them?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sad state of affairs.