Dr Aafia Siddiqui, 52, was as soon as one of the crucial wished ladies on the earth for her alleged hyperlinks to al Qaeda’s management and was jailed for 86 years in 2010 for trying to homicide an FBI agent in Afghanistan.
Dr Siddiqui, dubbed “Lady al Qaeda” by her critics, has maintained her innocence and hopes the tide may now be turning.
“I am… a victim of injustice, pure and simple. Every day is torture… it is not easy.”
She added: “One day, Inshallah (God-willing), I will be released from this torment.”
Dr Siddiqui’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, is asking on outgoing US President Joe Biden to challenge a pardon and has submitted a 76,500-word file to him.
President Biden has till Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday to think about the household’s software. To date he has issued 39 pardons and commuted 3,989 sentences.
Picture:
Dr Aafia Siddiqui pictured in a household picture
‘A listing of intelligence errors’
Mr Stafford Smith claims a listing of intelligence errors led to her initially changing into a suspect, citing witness testimonies that had been unavailable on the time of her trial.
He alleges that, whereas Dr Siddiqui was visiting Pakistan in 2003, she was kidnapped along with her three kids by the nation’s inter-services intelligence company and handed to the CIA, which took her to Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
‘Extraordinary rendition’
The CIA accused Dr Siddiqui of working for al Qaeda in Afghanistan – and he or she was the one lady who went via its full extraordinary rendition to torture programme within the early 2000s, Mr Stafford Smith claims.
Extraordinary rendition is a course of that always includes a detainee being transferred to secret detention or a 3rd nation for the needs of interrogation.
Picture:
Clive Stafford Smith says the case is among the worst miscarriages of justice he is seen
On the time of Dr Siddiqui’s trial in 2010, the choose mentioned: “There is no credible evidence in the record that the United States officials and/or agencies detained Dr Siddiqui” earlier than her 2008 arrest, including there may be “no evidence in the record to substantiate these allegations or to establish them as fact”.
‘No extra of a terrorist than I’m’
Mr Stafford Smith says US intelligence “got the wrong end of the stick in the beginning” as businesses thought Dr Siddiqui was a nuclear physicist engaged on a radioactive bomb “when she really did her PhD in education”.
He says this occurred because the US was “terrified of terrorists getting their hands on WMD (weapons of mass destruction)”, including: “She’s no more of a terrorist than I am”.
Mr Stafford Smith, who has secured the discharge of 69 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, says Dr Siddiqui’s case is “one of the worst I have seen”.
The CIA has not but acquired again to our request for remark.
‘Succesful and harmful’
CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou believed unequivocally that Dr Siddiqui had “terrorist sympathies”.
Picture:
Protests have been held calling for Dr Siddiqui’s launch
“One of the things that the CIA concentrated very heavily on in the months and years after the 9/11 attacks was the task of identifying al Qaeda’s couriers,” he mentioned.
“We just had no clear idea how al Qaeda’s leadership was communicating.
“We had heard through the years of a girl, a feminine courier, Aafia Siddiqui. Many individuals referred to as her Woman al Qaeda, simply because we did not know a lot about her.
“Her name had popped up on many occasions.
“We might hear her title talked about as somebody who could possibly be trusted. She was introduced to us as one of the crucial succesful and harmful figures in that motion.”
Picture:
CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou says Dr Siddiqui was once known as ‘Woman al Qaeda’
Mr Kiriakou denies the CIA tortured Dr Siddiqui in Afghanistan whereas he labored for the company, saying: “We did not torture women.”
“If Aafia Siddiqui had been captured in 2003 and had been sent to a black site, I would have known it,” he added.
“I would have briefed it to the director of the CIA. We didn’t have her.”
Nevertheless, he says it was “not beneath” CIA officers “to lie in official reporting cables” and that “the CIA routinely got things wrong when it came to other high-value targets”.
‘A really dangerous cover-up’
Dr Siddiqui’s sister, Fowzia, says she was a “victim of the war on terror… of a very bad cover-up”.
Picture:
Fowzia Siddiqui says her sister was ‘victimised for what a bunch of fanatics did a while in the past’
Fowzia has spent nearly 20 years campaigning for her sister’s freedom and helped find and lift her kids, Ahmed and Mariam, after their alleged abduction in 2003.
Dr Siddiqui’s youngest son, Suleiman, was simply six months outdated when he was final seen round this time – and the Siddiqui household worry he was killed throughout the alleged abduction.
Pakistan’s inter-services intelligence has been contacted for remark.
“I know she’s innocent,” says Fowzia. “If I knew there was even a glimpse of guilt there I would not have put my whole life on hold for this. She doesn’t deserve to be where she is.”
