Woman scientist alive, in US custody
Monday, August 04, 2008
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
WASHINGTON: Five years after her disappearance, an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist, accused of belonging to an al-Qaeda cell based in Boston, is alive and in custody in Afghanistan, her family attorney said. “It has been confirmed by the FBI that Aafia Siddiqi is alive,” said Elaine Whitfield Sharp, a lawyer for Siddiqi’s family, who said she spoke to an FBI official on Thursday. “She is injured but alive, and she is in Afghanistan.”
The news sheds some light on one of the most intriguing local mysteries in the war on terrorism. Siddiqi, who lived in Roxbury and studied at Brandeis University as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her.
For five years, the US and Pakistani authorities have denied knowing her whereabouts. But human rights groups and Siddiqi’s relatives have long suspected that she had been captured in Karachi and secretly taken into custody.
If Siddiqi was arrested in Pakistan and turned over to the United States, it would highlight a crucial instance of intelligence cooperation between the two countries during a historic low point in their relations.
Earlier this week, US officials accused ISI of actively cooperating with tribal, pro-Taliban militants engaged in killing US troops in Afghanistan. In the White House meeting, President Bush confronted Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani with the intercepted phone calls between ISI and the militants.
Marvin Weinbaum, a Pakistan specialist at the Middle East Institute, said Pakistan has a history of reacting to pressure from the United States by publicly revealing that it had captured and turned over high-value terrorism suspects. Usually, such cooperation is kept as secret because of anti-American sentiments.
“But when it suits their purpose to advertise that they are cooperative with the US intelligence, all too often, someone of high profile is revealed to have been captured and turned over,” he said.
On Thursday, an FBI official visited Siddiqi’s brother in Houston to deliver the news that she was alive and in custody, Sharp said, but the visit raised as many questions as it answered. The FBI officials would not say who was holding her or reveal the fate of her three young, American-born children.
“If she is in US custody, they want to know where she is,” Sharp said. “Who has got her? And does she need medical care?” The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment. Late last week, Siddiqi’s photo still appeared on the FBI’s list of people wanted for questioning.
Military documents declassified in recent years suggest that Siddiqi is suspected of having ties to several key terrorism suspects being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. She is believed to have links to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and allegedly arranged travel documents for another suspected terrorist. Papers in Guantanamo Bay also indicate that she married Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, an alleged al-Qaeda facilitator, who intended to blow up gas stations or poison water reservoirs in the United States.
The three men were among 14 high-value suspects brought to Guantanamo Bay in 2006 after years of secret detention in CIA prisons in eastern Europe. At the time, Bush said no suspects remained in so-called black sites, but human rights groups contradicted him, saying there were still suspects being held incommunicado at the US facilities such as the Bagram airbase detention centre in Afghanistan.
In a 2006 report, the Amnesty International listed Siddiqi as among a number of disappeared suspects in the war on terrorism. In recent weeks, Pakistani newspapers reported that a lawyer, Javed Iqbal Jaffery, had petitioned a Pakistani court for Siddiqi’s release and vowed to bring her detention to the UN human rights commissioner.
According to the reports, Jaffrey alleged that Siddiqi was jailed in Kabul after being held in Bagram; a British journalist reached a similar conclusion, based on interviews with prisoners released from Bagram.
Sharp said she believes those reports increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I do not believe that they just found Aafia,” Sharp said. “I believe that she was there all along.”
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=16402