THE PEACE Thru JUSTICE FOUNDATION
1100Veirs Mill Rd, STE L-15, PMB 298
Silver Spring, MD. 20902
DHUL HIJJAH 1431 A.H.
(December 1, 2010)
Assalaamu Alaikum (Greetings of Peace):
"Plausible Denial" is one of the oldest tricks in the government playbook, and that is precisely what we are getting in the WikiLeaks release on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. (see Guardian report below)
While U.S. "diplomats" may or may not have been aware of Aafia's whereabouts, her captors, which included American agents, knew precisely where she was! Anyone who objectively connects the dots of what is known will easily be able to see this for themselves.
The U.S. embassy reportedly wrote on July 31, 2008, "Bagram officials have assured us that they have not been holding Siddiqui for the last four years, as has been alleged." Well this is precisely what "Bagram officials" said to the British investigative journalist Yvonne Ridley. They initially denied that any woman was being held at Bagram. They were later forced to retract that lie, only to compound it with another: There was one woman, but it wasn't Aafia Siddiqui.
What do we know? According to Yvonne Ridley and Moazzam Beg (a former unjustly held "war on terrorism" detainee), we know that four men escaped from Bagram, and in recounting their observations and experiences shared information about a young Pakistani woman who could only be identified by her number "650." We know this woman was physically abused and tortured; and that she was also tortured mentally and emotionally (as only a mother could be) by the missing children who were torn away from her.
What we know is that after a British detainee, Binyan Mohamed, was released from his secret detention and allowed to return home, he positively identified Aafia Siddiqui from a photograph - as the woman he SAW WITH HIS OWN EYES at Bagram.
And finally, what we know, is that a request was made, and a determination given, that during the trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui at a federal courthouse in New York City, those missing five years in Aafia's life were officially "off limits." The only time we got a partial glimpse into those missing years was when Aafia Siddiqui took the stand herself, and over the repeated objections of government prosecutors, pulled back the curtain just a little! Why did they object? Because the government has a lot to hide!
While the trial has now ended, and Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been safely put away, efforts are still being made to keep this long suffering woman in complete and total isolation. She has yet to receive a visit from her own blood brother, Muhammad Siddiqui. Why? Because while theoretically he's on an approved list for visitation, "special rules" apply to his sister! (Because the oppressors still feel the need to cover their asses.)
I believe it was Winston Churchill who once said: "During times of war, the truth is so precious it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies." What we are seeing in the WikiLeaks release on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, is nothing more that a 21st century manifestation of that rather dubious principle, still in play.
The struggle continues...
El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan
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WikiLeaks cables: Mystery deepens over Pakistan scientist Aafia Siddiqui
Embassy cables show US diplomats were non-plussed over neuroscientist's whereabouts before she surfaced in Afghanistan
![Aafia Siddiqui in Afghan custody]()
Aafia Siddiquin custody in Afghanistan after going missing for five years. WikiLeaks cables reveal diplomats were unaware of her whereabouts, contrary to popular sentiment in Pakistan Photograph: Anonymous/AP
Contrary to claims by supporters of Aafia Siddiqui, the controversial Pakistani neuroscientist was never imprisoned at the Bagram military prison in Afghanistan, the embassy cables suggest.
"Bagram officials have assured us that they have not been holding Siddiqui for the last four years, as has been alleged," the embassy wrote on July 31, 2008.
The record is a fresh twist on one of the most vexed mysteries of the Bush-era "war on terror". Siddiqui, an MIT-educated 31-year-old, disappeared from Karachi with her three children in March 2003, shortly before US officials accused her of belonging to al-Qaida. She resurfaced in Afghanistan five years later, accused of trying to shoot American soldiers and was sent for trial to New York.
This year she was convicted and sentenced to 86 years in prison, prompting protests across Pakistan.
Siddiqui's family and supporters insist Siddiqui is innocent, and that she spent the "missing" five years between 2003 and 2008 in US detention at the Bagram base.
US denials of that account have generally been treated with scepticism by the Pakistani media, which has given credence to the family's account and dismissed US statements as part of a cover-up.
But the cables suggest American officials felt they genuinely had nothing to hide about Siddiqui and her three missing children, two of whom resurfaced in Karachi.
After Siddiqui was convicted last February, ambassador Anne Patterson said that Pakistani reaction was driven by "one-sided" media coverage that caused Pakistanis "to conclude her acquital was a near certainty".
Just as Pakistanis accuse the Americans of a conspiracy to convict Siddiqui, US officials cast a wry eye over the Pakistani activists who helped turn her case into a cause célèbre of anti-Americanism in Pakistan.
At one point the cables note that lawyer Javed Iqbal Jaffery, who filed a court application on Siddiqui's behalf, had also represented the disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. It was "unclear who is paying Jaffrey and/or orchestrating this campaign on Siddiqui's behalf."
The cables also reflect how the issue became a thorn in relations between the two countries, recording numerous requests by prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to visiting US politicians for Siddiqui's return to Pakistan.
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