The case of Aafia Siddiqui, 36, has caused an outcry in Pakistan amid sharply differing accounts of events.

US prosecutors say that Ms Siddiqui is a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist — near the top of the FBI’s most wanted list of fugitive terror suspects — who was detained in Afghanistan three weeks ago, carrying documents about how to make explosives and details of various US landmarks.

They add that she attacked US military officials who arrived at her detention centre to take her away, rushing out from behind curtains, snatching up an assault rifle that had been left lying on the floor, and firing twice before she was shot in the chest and subdued.

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Michael Garcia, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, says that Ms Siddiqui has been charged with one count of attempting to kill US officials and one count of assault, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years. The charges have been filed at Manhattan federal court.

But her family say that far from being arrested last month, Ms Siddiqui disappeared from the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2003, along with her three children.

They fear that Ms Siddiqui has been the subject of extraordinary rendition, snatched off the street and held in secret for five years, during which, they suspect, she has been brutally interrogated. Several high-profile al-Qaeda suspects have been held at a detention facility at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan under conditions of such secrecy that they are nicknamed “ghost” prisoners.

One British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, suggested last year that Ms Siddiqui could be the supposed “grey lady of Bagram”, a Pakistani woman who has allegedly been held there for years.

“What a mockery that after five years’ detention Aafia is suddenly discovered in Afghanistan,” said Dr Fauzia Siddiqui, the missing woman’s younger sister, at a press conference in Karachi.

She said that the family had received death threats by telephone and text, warning them not to speak about Ms Siddiqui’s case. She said that she did not know who was sending the threats.

Ms Siddiqui lived in the US for several years with her first husband, Dr Amjad Khan, studying biology at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. US security officials are said to believe that she was a sleeper agent, whose scientific education allowed her to become one of the few women to gain access to the inner circles of al-Qaeda, with its biological and chemical weapons programme.

She was placed on FBI surveillance inn 2002 after she ordered a flak jacket and book on explosives. She apparently returned to Pakistan in 2002 with her husband and three children and has not been heard of since March 2003, when she took a cab from Karachi to Islamabad to visit her mother

Elaine Whitfield Sharp, Ms Siddiqui’s family lawyer, called the charges ” a tall story”. She disputed the US Government’s earlier claims that Ms Siddiqui had gone underground for several years before her capture.

“I believe she’s become a terrible embarrassment to them, but she’s not a terrorist,” Ms Sharp said. “When the truth comes out, people will see she did nothing wrong.”

She said that Ms Siddiqui was not a terrorist, but an innocent woman who had been held at Bagram air base in Afghanistan or elsewhere for the last several years and tortured by some combination of US, Pakistani and Afghan officials.

The Pakistan Government has so far declined to comment on Ms Siddiqui’s case, although security officials deny that they arrested Ms Siddiqui in 2003. Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence has been accused of being party to the scientist’s detention.

The former military government of General Pervez Musharraf is suspected of handing her over to the Americans.

Her cause has been taken up by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, whose secretary-general, Iqbal Haider, said that the case against her was “false and fabricated”. He called for her to be tried by an independent tribunal.

“We demand that Aafia’s trial should not take place in Guantanamo Bay. We demand that Aafia’s relatives be allowed immediate access to her,” Mr Haider told the Karachi press conference.

Her family appealed for her release. “Her absence has given us great pain for the last five years and we have been looking for her and her children,” said Dr Siddiqui. “My sister is innocent, she has done no wrong.”

CASE DETAILS:

The press reports claimed that Dr. Afia had been picked-up by Pakistani intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggested that she was handed over to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of her arrest she was 30 years and the mother of three sons the oldest of which was four and the youngest only one month.

A Monthly English magazine of Karachi in a special coverage on Dr. Afia reported that one week after her disappearance, a plain clothed intelligence went to her mother’s house and warned her, “We know that you are connected to higher-ups but do not make an issue out of your daughter’s disappearance.” According to the report the mother was threatened her with ‘dire consequences’ if she made a fuss.

Whilst Dr. Afia’s whereabouts remain unknown, there are reports of a woman called ‘Prisoner 650′ is being detained in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison and that she has been tortured to the point where she has lost her mind. Britain’s Lord Nazeer Ahmed, (of the House of Lords), asked questions in the House about the condition of Prisoner 650 who, according to him is physically tortured and continuously raped by the officers at prison. Lord Nazeer has also submitted that Prisoner 650 has no separate toilet facilities and has to attend to her bathing and movements in full view of the other prisoners.

Also, on July 6, 2008 a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years. “I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her,” Ms Ridley said at a press conference.

Ms Ridley, who went to Pakistan to appeal for help, said the case came to her attention when she read the book, The Enemy Combatant, by a former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg. After being seized in February 2002 in Islamabad, Mr Begg was held in detention centres in Kandahar and Bagram for about a year before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. He recounted his experiences in the book after his release in 2005. Mr. Imran Khan, leader of Justice Party (T.I) suspects that prisoner 650 is the Dr. Afia Siddiqui and USA and Pakistani authorities are hiding facts of ‘Prisoner 650′.

SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please write to the relevant authorities listed below and request them to investigate immediately. Dr. Afia’s whereabouts must be confirmed and the safety of her children assured. Regardless of whether Dr. Afia is Prisoner 650 or not the fact is that she has been missing, along with her children for five years. The governments of the USA and Pakistan at first confirmed her arrest and then denied it. Both governments have a duty to report any information they might have on the matter.

SAMPLE LETTER:

Dear________,

PAKISTAN/USA: A lady doctor is missing with her three children since five years after her arrest

Name of victim: Ms. Dr. Afia Siddiqui and her three children
Block 7, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, Sindh province
The units of the alleged perpetrators: Intelligence agencies of Pakistan and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI-US)

I am shocked to know that Dr. Afia Siddiqui, a Pakistani citizen has been missing with her three children since April 2003, after her arrest by intelligence agencies of Pakistan. The whereabouts of children is also unknown, which is a serious act of negligence on the part of the government with regard to its responsibility to protect the citizen of the Pakistan.

According to the information I have received Dr. Afia was picked-up by Pakistani intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggested that she was handed over to the American FBI. A few days later an American news channel, NBC, reported that Afia had been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of facilitating money transfers for terror networks of Osama Bin Laden.

On April 1, 2003, a small news item was published in an Urdu daily with reference to a press conference of then Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat when, in reply to a question regarding the arrest of Dr. Siddiqui, he said she has not been arrested. But in another report the minister for interior said,”You will be astonished to know about the activities of Dr. Afia.” A weekly English magazine in its special coverage on Dr. Afia reported that after one week of the incident, an intelligence agency official, a motor cyclist in plain clothes, came to the house of her mother and warned “We know that you are connected to higher-ups but do not make an issue out of her daughter’s disappearance” and threatened her with dire consequences. After this development the whereabouts of Dr. Afia and her children are yet unknown.

What is also of grave concern to me is that when she was arrested by Pakistani intelligence authorities she was handed over to American intelligence agencies without being tried in Pakistan, I do not find any rationale in sending her along with her children to other country when there are Pakistani laws to deal with the suspected terrorists. It is known that President Musharraf handed over 600 suspected terrorists to America.

There are reports that in Afghanistan’s prison of Bagram there is a woman prison known as Prisoner 650 and that she has been severely tortured. It is also widely suspected that Prisoner 650 is Dr. Afia Siddiqui. This prisoner has reportedly lost her mind due to constant rape and ill treatment.

I remind you that this is the duty of coalition government under Prime Minister Mr. Yousaf Raza Gillani to probe cases of those Pakistani suspected terrorists who have been handed over to foreign forces in the name of war on terror. The government should also inform Pakistani citizens about the whereabouts of Dr. Afia Siddiqui and her children. I also demand that government should also ensure the safety of her children.

Yours sincerely,

————-
PLEASE SEND YOU LETTERS TO:

1. The Chief
Allied Joint Force Command
Head Quarters Brunssum,
Public Affirs office, P.O. BOX 270
6440, AG, Brunssem
THE NETHERLANDS
Tel. No.: +31 45 526 2409
Email: pio@jfcbs.nato.intHeadquar
t

2. Mr. George W. Bush
President of the United State of America (USA)
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW,
Washington, DC 20500
USA
Email: presidents@presidentsusa.net

3. Mr. Hamid Karzai
President of Afghanistan
Gul Khana Palace
Presidential Palace
Kabul
AFGHANISTAN
Email: president@afghanistangov.org

4. General Pervez Musharraf
President of Pakistan
President’s Secretariat
Islamabad
PAKISTAN
Fax: +92 51 922 1422 / 4768; 920 1893 or 1835
E-mail: (please see: http://www.presidentofpakistan.gov.pk/WTPresidentMessage.aspx)

5. Mr. Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani
Prime Minister
Prime Minister House, Islamabad,
PAKISTAN
Fax: +92 51 922 1596
Tel: +92 51 920 6111
E-mail: webmaster@infopak.gov.pk or infominister@pak.gov.pk

6. Mr. Farooq Naik
Minister of Law, Justice and Human Rights
S Block Pakistan Secretariat
Islamabad
PAKISTAN
Fax: +92 51 920 2628
E-mail: minister@molaw.gov.pk

7. Mr. Rehman Malik
Advisor for Ministry of Interior
Room No. 404, 4th Floor, R Block,
Pak Secretariat
Islamabad
PAKISTAN
Fax: +92 51 920 2624
Tel: +92 51 921 2026
E-mail: minister@interior.gov.pk

Thank you

Urgent Appeals Programme
Asian Human Rights Commission (ua@ahrchk.org)