An unusual suspect
The story of Aafia Siddiqui reads like a good mystery novel: a young Pakistani woman gets swept up in a national-security probe, moves to her homeland, abruptly disappears, suddenly resurfaces five years later in Afghanistan, and then lands in a New York courtroom, wounded and frail, accused of trying to kill U.S. soldiers.
The really disturbing part is that it’s not fiction, and even more strangely, after so many years, these facts are virtually all the public knows of the neuroscientist and mother of three, despite the FBI's supposedly relentless pursuit.
U.S. authorities say they started tracking Siddiqui and her husband several years ago, intrigued by some odd military-type equipment purchases. In 2003, terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed implicated her as an al-Qaida operative, and she vanished shortly afterward.
Advocates say the evidence (including suspicious materials found in her handbag) is rigged, and that Siddiqui is a victim of a global anti-terror dragnet. Her defenders also question the government’s allegations that the tiny woman grabbed an officer’s rifle and “fired it at officers and employees of the FBI and the United States armed services.”
Siddiqui 's sudden reappearance also raises questions about the government's involvement in her case. Her defenders, including her family and British journalist Yvonne Ridley, suspect that while she was missing, she was actually held captive at a US-run detention camp in Bagram, Afghanistan. The controversy raises the specter of “extraordinary rendition”—the CIA’s counter-terrorist strategy of kidnapping people and sending them to places where they are likely to be tortured.
For now, Siddiqui is being held without bail and, according to her lawyer, seems glad to be jailed in the United States—a sign that she wasn’t on the run all these years, but rather, imprisoned under much more brutal conditions.
The human rights group Amnesty International has followed Siddiqui as well as dozens of other people “who are believed to have been subject to an enforced disappearance for which the United States bears responsibility.”
Activists are still trying to piece together what Siddiqui’s reemergence may reveal and who should be held accountable. Amnesty's Asia-Pacific director Sam Zarifi told National Public Radio:
"If the story suggested by the U.S. government is accurate, it paints a very unflattering picture of the competence of forces who are literally on the frontlines of the ‘war on terror’… If the U.S. story is not true, then we're looking at a serious breach of U.S. and international law when a prisoner in custody is shot."
Whatever the truth turns out to be, it's unlikely to quell people's fears about either the federal government’s ability to protect the public, or its ability to harm.
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Comments (4)
Why does Newsday always employ writers who blame America first? The article about the US unfairly targeting this pooooor woman from Pakistan, who came here to be educated in one of the finest institutions in the world, MIT. She used that education to plot against the country who took her in to help her. Why do you believe that she was set up? She was named by the World Trade center attack's mastermind as a prime operative of Al Quaeda. What's wrong with backing your own country for a change? The intelligence arms of our country are trying to protect us from people like her. Get real and wake up! I trust them more than I trust her.
Just for once I’d like to see Newsday quote someone that's not from Amnesty International, or the ACLU, or Move On or a liberal "think tank" in support of their anti-American stories. Can Newsday ever look for the storyline that is supportive of America? Newsday serves a region that lost hundreds of INNOCENT, yes, really, truly, actually innocent people in the attack of 9/11. To take this Pakistani woman who educated herself in one of our finest institutions, has ties to terrorists, and has been apprehended under very suspicious circumstances and defend her is an insult to everyone who lost a truly innocent family member or loved one on 9/11. No one expects you to shill for the US government, but on the other hand, presenting this BS coming from this terrorist’s lawyer and Amnesty International makes you complicit in the crime.
The story you are not telling the public is that it's been over 2,500 days without a follow-up attack by the extremists who mean us harm. Kudos to the government and to the president for keeping us safe.... however they've done it.
Newsday sides with a terrorist. I am shocked.
The story as written does present a very revealing point.
This woman says she is glad... GLAD!! to be in a US prison as opposed to one in her home country.
But Wait!!! I thought terrorists were being treated unfairly, like animals, even TORTURED while in US custody.
Now, it seems from a first hand account, that terrorists are being treated in the USA better than they would be anywhere else... even at home.
I congratulate Newsday for making this very valid point, although I suspect it was not their real intent.