Brutally ravaged everyday, subjected to humiliation of every possible form, forced to shower in front of other inmates and guards - battered, shattered and finally with a lost conscious mind 'Prisoner 650' a female, lady, doctor and mother to 3 innocent children is Dr. Afia Siddiqui. And the world is now a civilised place - the inhabitants tolerant. The era of the Inquisitors - torturing souls, killing and burning people at stakes, calling it a 'witchhunt' - is supposedly over. The ones responsible for this particular atrocity and tearing the strands of the word humane apart, for they preach it loudly, are no different from the people at the time of the mad Roman emperor Caligula. But this isn't ancient Rome we are talking about, or is it? No trial, no justification, no detailed account submission and no
'Prisoner 650' now identified as Dr. Afia Siddiqui -dangling between life and death in critical condition, shot in the stomach, with a kidney removed, shattered nose and subjected to many other tortures, better not mentioned. The lords of war set an example. |
solid reason. This was the Roman Empire. Welcome to the New World. This is the USA. New values without any attention to individual human rights.
“The CIA or FBI is what the Gestapo was to the Nazi regime.” This is mentioned in many columns that have been written, dismissing the methods of the FBI and other US intelligence agencies. Those columns are by none other than the Americans themselves. They have appeared in newspapers, magazines, blogs and all sorts of communication media. But it makes no difference. For instance, the J. Edgar Hoover files and tapes of Lee Harvey Oswald's torture in Mexico at a US military base prior to his shooting of John F. Kennedy, too, were burnt when the special committee for investigation demanded to see them. This, too, shall pass. And we will still be the same. The murders and disappearances of many in Ireland passed as well and nothing much came out of whatever the Irish demanded or said. And the Germans and Japanese in the Second World War were supposed to be brutal. In the name of national security, national interest, and now 'terrorism', every action can easily be covered up. But sometimes the truth prevails.
Approximately 172 miles from Peshawar and 190 miles from Mazar-e-Sharif lies the bleak structure, the military detention centre, Bagram Theatre Internment Facility. Originally built by the Soviets as an Aircraft Machine Shop, Bagram, a concrete-and-sheet metal facility that was retrofitted with wire pens and wooden isolation cells, the centre, a part of Bagram Air Base in the ancient city of Bagram, Afghanistan, is now the 'house of Horrors' famous for torture and reported homicides. They have unique inhuman ways of extracting information.
From this detention centre for men, inmates in their cages like captured animals, would hear singular female screams every night. A horrifying chill would run down their spines. An inmate at Bagram, in his book revealed to the world about these mind-shattering screams of 'Prisoner 650'. We have all read her story. We have all condemned the manner in which the lady was treated in the name of interrogation - brutal interrogation - beyond any boundaries of human rights and in the hellish territory of human wrongs.
Dr. Afia Siddiqui, a bright genetic scientist studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She lived in the US for about 10 years while she completed her PhD. She returned to Pakistan in 2002. Dissatisfied with the jobs available in the market and with her marriage on the rocks, she again visited the US in February 2003 to search for a job and to submit an application to the US immigration authorities. Reportedly, she moved there freely and came back to Karachi by the end of February 2003 after renting a post office box in her name in Maryland for the receipt of her mail. It has been claimed by the FBI as reported by Newsweek International, (June 23, 2003) that the box was hired for one Mr. Majid Khan, an alleged member of Al Qaeda residing in Baltimore and with disastrous plans to blow up fuel tanks and petrol stations in the Baltimore region.
Throughout March 2003 - after having constantly watched Dr. Afia's movements and allegedly ascertaining that she was a key person of Al Qaeda fund transfers - the American media ran a well strategised audio-visual 'wanted' campaign. Her images were telecast with her photo on American television channels and radios portraying her as a dangerous Al Qaeda operative, wanted by the FBI for interrogation. On learning of the FBI campaign against her, Afia went underground in Karachi and remained so till her kidnapping or whichever word the authorities may want to use for the act, for the terrorists that are captured are usually paraded before the media to impress upon the public of the authorities' efficiency.
The June 23, 2003, issue of Newsweek International was devoted exclusively to Al Qaeda. The nucleus of this issue was an article, “Al Qaeda's Network in America”. The article had three photographs of the alleged Al Qaeda members - Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Dr. Afia Siddiqui and Ali S. Al Marri of Qatar who has also studied in the US and had long since returned to his homeland. In this article, which has been laboriously researched and authored by eight journalists who were given access to FBI records, the only charge levelled against Dr. Afia was that she rented a post-office box to help a former resident of Baltimore named Majid Khan, alleged to be an Al Qaeda suspect to help establish his US identity. These charges came after a story detailing Dr. Afia's travels to Monrovia and Liberia. Ironically, Afia's counsel, Elaine Whitfield insisted, “Aafia Siddiqui was here in June 2001. And I can prove it.” If she can prove Afia wasn't in Liberia that week, the charges against Dr. Afia would become a record of embarrassment for the US authorities.
A full scale search for Dr. Afia was authorised by the FBI and finally on April 1, 2003, she disappeared. Who picked her up is another story. But the fact is that Afia, a responsible citizen held in high esteem by her professors in the United States' according to her mother (late) Ismat Sidiqui, vanished without a trace - disappeared in the manner hundreds had in Ireland for resisting the British government. No one at that time knew her whereabouts and promptly the local authorities and American spokespeople kept denying any such incident. One month of disappearance and the family was served a subpoena for Afia to appear in front of a grand jury at the family's US residence. There wasn't even a report lodged of Afia's disappearance. This explains a lot.
Later, NBC reported that Afia had been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of facilitating money transfers for the terror networks of Osama Bin Laden. Her mother termed the NBC report absurd, reported a newspaper.
On April 1, 2003, a news item was published in the leading Urdu daily with reference to a press conference of the then Interior Minister. When questioned with regard to Dr. Afia's arrest, he denied that she had been arrested. This was followed by another Urdu daily article on April 2 regarding another press conference in which the same minister said Dr. Afia was connected to Al Qaeda and that she had not been arrested as she was absconding. He added: “You will be astonished to know about the activities of Dr. Afia.” A monthly English magazine, in a special coverage on Dr. Afia, reported that as her mother was going around contacting top police officials regarding her daughter's disappearance, the family house in Karachi was visited by intelligence agency personnel warning her mother of 'dire consequences' if she went around making an issue of her daughter's disappearance.
On July 6, 2008, a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, called for help for a Pakistani woman she believed had been held 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,” Ridley said at a press conference.
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 apprehended in February 2002 in Islamabad, Begg, a British Muslim, was held in detention centres in Kandahar and Bagram for about a year before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He recounted his experiences in the book after his release in 2005. 'Prisoner 650' now identified as Dr. Afia Siddiqui -dangling between life and death in critical condition, shot in the stomach, with a kidney removed, shattered nose and subjected to many other tortures, better not mentioned. The lords of war set an example.
At present, human rights organisations are trying for the release of Dr. Afia. The FBI on August 5, 2008, suddenly produced Dr. Afia in court with charges that did not at all seem to align with the ones that were earlier levelled against her. Everyone has a different story. Everyone will have a different story because no one really knows the truth and the victim has lost her conscious mind, which is not dissimilar to the outcome of brain washing and mental torture techniques. The sad part is that it was on the behest of a United Nation's-led investigation that resulted in Dr. Afia being labelled as an Al Qaeda operative in 2001. But again, the United Nations is nothing more than a puppet for the world's only super power.
Dr. Afia Siddiqui is one of many individuals who have suffered unspeakable tortures. She also happened to be the only woman on the venomous FBI's “most wanted” list of 2002. Symbolically, this is the story of a nation - a nation which is tortured by its actions unbefitting a sovereign state. This is the story of a slave nation - enslaved by their deeds and greed along with many other vices that seem quite normal to them. When an American senator described the national greed for money, the whole nation was enraged but did not correct their ways. Pakistanis living abroad prefer living as second-rate citizens rather than coming back to their homeland. In foreign lands, be a little out of line and they, too, can be labelled as extremists, in a resulting pursuance till seized. This has become a very complicated affair and is further being complicated by a concoction of surprisingly knotty policies, most of which are dictates from the outside. Meanwhile, the mystery of Afia's three children has yet to be uncovered.
