freedetainees.org

By Farah Stockman
Globe Staff

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’s attorney said yesterday.

“It has been confirmed by the FBI that Aafia Siddiqui is alive,” said Elaine Whitfield Sharp, a lawyer for Siddiqui’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.

Siddiqui, who lived in Roxbury and studied at Brandeis University as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her.

For five years, US and Pakistani authorities have denied knowing her whereabouts. But human rights groups and Siddiqui’s relatives have long suspected that she had been captured in Karachi and secretly taken into custody.

If Siddiqui 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 Pakistan’s intelligence service of actively cooperating with tribal, pro-Taliban militants engaged in killing US troops in Afghanistan. In a White House meeting Monday, President Bush confronted Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan with intercepted phone calls between Pakistan’s powerful ISI intelligence service and the militants.

Marvin Weinbaum, a Pakistan specialist at the Middle East Institute, said that Pakistan has a history of reacting to pressure from the United States by publicly revealing that it has captured and turned over high-value terrorism suspects. Usually, such cooperation is kept quiet because of anti-American sentiments.

“But when it suits their purpose to advertise that they are cooperative with US intelligence, all too often, someone high profile is revealed to have been captured and turned over,” he said.

On Thursday, an FBI official visited Siddiqui’s brother in Houston to deliver the news that she is alive and in custody, Sharp said, but the visit raised as many questions as it answered. FBI officials would not say who is holding her or reveal the fate of her three young, American-born children.

“If she’s 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, Siddiqui’s photo still appeared on the FBI’s list of people wanted for questioning.

Military documents declassified in recent years suggest that Siddiqui is suspected of having ties to several key terrorism suspects being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

She is believed to have links to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 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 US facilities such as the Bagram airbase detention center in Afghanistan.

In a 2006 report, Amnesty International listed Siddiqui 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 Siddiqui’s release and vowed to bring her detention to the UN human rights commissioner.

According to the reports, Jaffrey alleged that Siddiqui 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 US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that they just found Aafia,” Sharp said. “I believe that she was there all along.”
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

August 3rd, 2008 | Category: Abuse, Afghanistan, Bagram, Detainee, Detainee Abuse, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, Female Detainee, Grey Lady of Bagram, Kabul Prison, Khalil Janahi, Prisoner 650 |  Print This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL