Afia-Caust Deniers and Revisionists

By : Bilal A. Siddiqui

While almost everyone in Pakistan is concerned about the plight of a Muslim neurologist abducted by Pakistani intelligence agencies , handed over to the Americans and tortured for more than five years along with her three children (the youngest being just 6 months old at the time of abduction), there is the predictable silent majority of “liberals” who have once again chosen to defy common sense and the real, humane majority. A point in case is a recent and seemingly scholarly article written by Anas Abbas:

Aafia Siddiqui VS (Jews, Zarina Mari, Shazia Khalid and others)

The author has divided his thesis in sections, so we will follow his format and dispute his assertions where we find them inaccurate.

Brief background of Aafia Siddiqui:

It is reported that Aafia Siddiqui was involved in providing charity funds to two major charity organizations that were ostensibly working in the U.S. for humanitarian causes but were later banned after 9/11 for having ties to terrorists in Afghanistan.

This is correct, but misleading. Hundreds of people have raised funds for various charities, or worked for them without being aware of or being involved in deciding who is the end recipient of the aid. She did raise funds for Muslims of Bosnia and Chechnya, perhaps for these two charities, but what does it prove? Val Kilmer once posed for a C.A.I.R. photo-op at their charity for Bosnia or Chachnya. Now that CAIR too is alleged to be a terrorist fundraiser [1], would the author also suggest that Val too raised funds for “terrorists”? Incidentally, CAIR is one of the organizations, Dr. Afia raised funds for [2].

There are numerous other stories that have been verified by FBI officials, Aafia’s husband, some prominent journalists belonging to Newsweek & Guardian and Fleet National Bank Investigators.

The author did not enlighten us of the nature of “numerous other stories”, but if they are like her above mentioned charity efforts, they hardly prove the US government’s case. Apart from that, how does “verified by FBI officials” lend credence to the case against her. The FBI is a party to the case, so how can a hostile witness‘s testimony amount to anything? We will talk about Dr. Aafia’s ex-husband in a moment, but since the journalists were not named, we too would not delve into that aspect, nor speak on the credibility of mainstream media.

The investigators later found Aafia’s and her husband’s involvement in transferring large sums of money to mysterious accounts of Saudi nationals and buying night goggles, body armours & military manuals.

This is what the investigators say they found. However, the point being is missed that the “investigators” (i.e. FBI and CIA) are parties to the case. They are not independent investigators. Infact, their framing of innocent people is well documented, and not questioned by historians [3].

Dr. Afia’s ex-husband had a possible role in framing her up. We will talk about this later. Briefly though, he is the one who was accused by Dr. Afia’s mother of using her email account to order the military equipment [4]. That this is an allegation is accepted, but there is corroborating evidence to show Dr. Amjad’s (her ex-husband) complicity. After all, he is the one still roaming freely. We explore this further , later.

It is also reported that she got married to Ali Abd’al Aziz Ali (aka Amir Al Balochi), a nephew of a dreaded terrorist Khaled Shiekh Mohammad (BBC confirms this from security sources and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s family).

The author once again seems to buy a lot of the American government’s assertions.  Mr. Khalid Al-Sheikh was admitted to have been water-boarded 183 times by the CIA [5,13]. His admission to being the “dreaded terrorist” in order to escape being repeatedly made to believe he will be killed by drowning, is hardly surprising. Ammar (not Amir) too has been held at Guantanamo, and facing trial [6]. What concerns us is why is her yet-to-be-proven (a BBC report is not a marriage certificate) marriage to the nephew of a “dreaded terrorist” being played up to mean she too was the so-called “Lady Al-Qaida”? Is she guilty by association? If so, then why is George W. Bush not considered a Nazi, since after all it was his grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush, who funded the Nazi war machine [7]? Let us not forget that the alleged marriage took place before his arrest and trial.

Theory 1 and 2:

he popular claim here is that she was abducted by FBI/ISI and then transferred to the U.S. Bagram facility in Afghanistan. There, she has claimed that she was tortured and raped consistently by soldiers and her two children also died during this time. It is also claimed that after this information was leaked to the public, American soldiers created a story to frame up Aafia by placing her in front of an Afghan police station with her elder son and creating a perfect scenario where she can be charged as a would be suicide bomber.

There is corroborating evidence of her stay at Bagram. Many people who had been held at Bagram previously, and who were later released after being found innocent, and others who managed to escape from the prison told of a female Pakistani prisoner held there [8,9,10].  These reports came before her sudden “discovery” in Qandahar in 2008. What is also interesting is that withing days of Yvonne Riddley breaking the news about presence of Prosoner 650, and consistent denials by the US Ambassador and State Department, she was found in Qandahar [11]. All this might be a strange coincidence, but why is the benefit of doubt being given to the FBI and associated agencies, who definitely don’t have a clean record, as US Congressman Ron Paul pointed out  [12,13].

Theory 3 – Scenario 1.

Aafia was abducted briefly in 2003 but was later released and then forced to go undercover by security officials of both America and Pakistan in order to infiltrate Al Qaeda’s sleeper cells.  Later, Aafia visited her uncle Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi  and pleaded him to hand her over to the Taliban in Afghanistan as she was reluctant to work as double agent. Soon Aafia disappeared again from the guest house where she was staying during the visit to her uncle. The only source for this claim is her uncle himself, who recently gave this account to a Guardian newspaper journalist Declan Walsh and the BBC.

Faruqi did claim meeting her in 2008 (the year she was arrested in Qandahar), according to the Walsh interview [14]. However,  he does not say anything about her whereabouts between her 2003 abduction and the 2008 meeting. In fact the same report [Walsh, The Guardian] states that:

“Siddiqui told him she had been in both Pakistani and American captivity since 2003, but was vague on the details. “I was in the cells but I don’t know in which country, or which city. They kept shifting me,” she said. Now she had been set free but remained under the thumb of intelligence officials based in Lahore. They had given her a mission: to infiltrate al-Qaida in Pakistan. But, Siddiqui told her uncle, she was afraid and wanted out. She begged him to smuggle her into Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban. “That was her main point,” he recalled. “She said: ‘I will be safe with the Taliban.’” [14]

One wonders why the author chose to remain silent on this detail. If the same report and source is trusted why is it not mentioned that he too was unaware of her whereabouts during these years?

Theory 3 – Scenario 2

This is the official account that the US government and Aafia’s husband Amjad khan maintains. Here they claim that she was an extremist Jihadi who had links with top Al Qaeda operatives. She was also of a violent nature and went into hiding in 2003 after she found out about the FBI investigation. She then appeared in Afghanistan in 2008 and was then arrested by Afghan Police.

We will not go into why the two governments’  “evidence” might be hostile, as that is quite obvious, but let’s take a closer look at Dr. Amjad, her ex-husband. Dr. Amjad, by all accounts and his own admission was an abusive husband.  In fact, once  “he flung a milk bottle at his wife that split her lip.” [14]. Also to be taken into account is the fact that he is the only person in this whole saga who maintains a close relationship with ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency.  According to him, in April 2003,  “the ISI asked him to identify his ex-wife as she got off a flight from Islamabad, accompanied by her son.” [14] He was questioned by and he cooperated with the FBI too [15]. He alone was removed from the FBI wanted list [16]. Moreover, this is also supported by a startling incident caught on camera [17]. To summarize the incident, Dr. Amjad tried to meet his son by requesting Dr. Fauzia, Afia’s sister. The meeting was arranged by a human rights organization. On seeing Dr Amjad, the  son got so terrified (u can see the aghast expression on his face in profile), that  he ran away screaming. He later told his aunt and human rights officials that “This is the man who used to beat him in Afghanistan and I used to see him there.” Afterwards, he was convinced to sit close to Dr . Amjad, but looked very uneasy in the video. [17]

Again, it might be some coincidence, the boy could be hallucinating, and anything else that the liberal silent majority might like to think up, but, why is the benefit of doubt being afforded to a man who  clearly did not come to any harm during this whole saga, and whom even his own son mistrusts? Little wonder then, that fair-minded journalists are questioning his impartiality and his decision to remain silent for so many years [18]. The fact that he claimed that Dr. Aafia’s bruised face is not the result of American torture, but his own spree of wife-battery [18a,18b], leads credence to rumors of his complicity in her abduction [4]!

In any case above, there is no mention of the whereabouts of those innocent children that were with her when she was abducted or disappeared in 2003. What really happened to those children? Were they killed by American or Pakistani agents in the process of torturing Aafia Siddiqui? Or are they still out there somewhere with any Aafia Siddiqui’s aide.

Her family and she herself has repeatedly raised accusation regarding her children’s plight, so in fact it is covered by Theory 1 and 2. Perhaps the author should learn to remember the case he built.  At any rate, her children were not the only minors the FBI attempted to abduct. Dr. Mehwish Baig of Karachi, Pakistan too alleges that FBI agents forced their way into her home, her children’s schools and her brother’s home inside a Naval cantonment just because she wanted to renounce her American citizenship [19].

The point is that we will never know about this unless there is a proper investigation on what exactly happened to her in 2003. All available accounts of her life before 2003 shows that she is a devoted extremist; but there is no account of her whereabouts after 2003.

This is what all Pakistanis (the non-silent ‘minority’) has been demanding: a proper investigation not influenced by governments. The author accuses Dr. Aafia of being extremist, while he failed to provide any evidence to that effect, and neither did he define what he deems extremism. Is charity fund-raising extremism. I hope the author extends his analogy to George and Precott Bush and Val Kilmer!

We must point out however, that of the seven counts the prosecution presented in her indictment, none relate to her extremist connections, blood diamonds,  or any wrongdoing before her arrest in 2008 [20]. It seems Afia-caust deniers and revisionists believe these charges more than the US government is sure of them!

We will analyze the rest of the article later. We will stop this installment here,  as this was the main gist of the author’s claim. Other claims too are spurious, but their rebuttal will come in the coming days.

[The article has also been published at draafia.org]

Theory 3

This section has two scenarios

Scenario 1.

Aafia was abducted briefly in 2003 but was later released and then forced to go undercover by security officials of both America and Pakistan in order to infiltrate Al Qaeda’s sleeper cells.  Later, Aafia visited her uncle Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi (The same person who called Imran Khan to report Aafia’s disappearance in 2003) and pleaded him to hand her over to the Taliban in Afghanistan as she was reluctant to work as double agent. Soon Aafia disappeared again from the guest house where she was staying during the visit to her uncle. The only source for this claim is her uncle himself, who recently gave this account to a Guardian newspaper journalist Declan Walsh and the BBC.

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