Aafia Siddique’s Appeal Mysteriously Withdrawn

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On October 9, 2014, Dr. Aafia Siddique’s family announced that US District Judge Richard Berman had without any warning ordered the case closed for the appeal of her conviction. The openly hostile, Zionist activist judge, the same judge who sentenced Aafia in early 2010, denies this. The Nation, Pakistan reported that Berman stated he had “allowed” Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to withdraw what could be the last appeal of her conviction on charges of attempted murder. Berman claimed that Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence at Carswell prison medical centre in Texas, had ‘clearly and unequivocally’ stated her intent to end the appeal. Berman added that even if the appeal had continued, he likely would have ruled against her.  

Salman Khan of the Free Aafia Movement said the organization had made vehement attempts to protest the racist judge’s inclusion in the appeals process, but they were unable to have him removed from proceedings due to lack of legal funds.

“Just to reopen the trial costs $150,000, and then to remove him it would have cost us a further $100,000,” he said.

Reuters reports that Aafia wrote a statement, “I refuse to participate in this system of total injustice that has punished and tortured me repeatedly, and continues to do so, without my having committed a crime.” She wrote that she wanted to be sent home to Pakistan through diplomacy, not through the legal system.

However, Aafia’s sister, Dr. Fowzia Siddique said mystery shrouds the circumstances. She is convinced that Aafia’s statement was coerced. In their last communication, Aafia said she was “determined to fight her case.”

“This is not Aafia’s decision. I know because my last conversation with her was that she was visited [in her dreams] by our prophet Muhammad, saw, and he was pleased with my efforts and the appeal. She said it is for this reason I consent, and if we don’t connect again DO NOT believe any statement to the contrary on my behalf.”

“Since then we have had absolutely no contact with her. I know she did not withdraw of her own free will. She has been coerced. God knows how much torture [she’s been forced to endure], complete solitary and manipulations…. It horrifies me to even think about what she has been forced to go through.”

Aafia, who is being held in solitary confinement, has not been allowed phone calls to her family in Pakistan since initiating her appeal.

“We have not been allowed [in-person contact] with her at any time. There is a prison rule that she gets to speak to family for 300 minutes per month – as long as the family pays for the call. We did get that order, and the only time that was implemented was when there were worldwide demonstrations – at those times there were calls. But since filing the appeal they have kept Aafia completely incommunicado,” stated her sister.

Mauri Saalakhan of the Peace and Justice Foundation comments, “While Malala Yousafzai is being celebrated for her accomplishments and yet unfulfilled future potential, Aafia Siddique is wasting away in a maximum security prison cell on a military base in the land of ‘liberty and justice for all!’”

Aafia received her university training in America, graduating with honors from MIT and the Jewish university Brandeis, where she was active in Muslim student groups. She was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying that if Americans would know more about the beauty of Islam, they would all want to become Muslims. This innocent statement of youthful idealism caught the attention of the local Zionist organizations.

Soon later, in 2003, Aafia was wanted by the FBI for questioning for possible ties to al Qaeda because she made a debit card purchase at a US army surplus store. She and her children were kidnapped by Pakistani authorities while awaiting a train.  Aafia was placed into one black car and the crying children into another. They were handed over to US agents and held incommunicado in Afghanistan for five years. Aafia’s baby was never seen again. The two older children were rescued from Bagram prison some years later as a result of intervention from the UK and are now living with relatives.
Instead of receiving an apology, this tiny woman, who never did anything more radical than collecting boots to donate to Bosnia, has been named as one of the FBI’s most wanted “terrorists.” Her isolation covers up some dark secrets, the government hopes.

Siddiqui was never even charged with links to terrorism. The FBI agents, US soldiers and interpreters said that as they were about to interrogate her at an Afghan police compound in Ghazni, Afghanistan, she supposedly grabbed a rifle and began shooting at them. None of them were wounded, but she was shot in the abdomen when they “returned fire.” At her trial, Aafia’s lawyer argued that there was no evidence the rifle had been fired.

Aafia approached the US soldiers because she thought they were there to save her from her Afghani captors! Aafia was being raped and tortured at the US military’s Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Instead of helping her, the US government committed her to life at Carswell, where she has reportedly been forced to walk on the Quran in addition to other humiliations.

What has been done to this innocent Pakistani woman and her children in the name of the US War on Terror is so sick and so awful that it would turn the stomaches of every citizen of the United States if they knew about it. Popular opinion would instantly turn dead against this criminal use of the American government.

“Had Aafia’s appeal reached its logical end, many hidden facts would have come to light, and many important people unmasked. This just proves Aafia is a victim of international power politics and her captives have a lot to hide and will revert to any length to keep her behind bars,” Fowzia told reporters.

British Government Arrests Activist Moazzam Begg

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Moazzam Begg, who was imprisoned at Guantánamo. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Former Bagram and Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg was re-arrested on February 26, 2014. On March 1 he was charged with training and aiding terrorists in Syria, to which he pleaded “Not Guilty.” Three other persons were similarly charged.

“All four arrests are connected,” said Detective Superintendent Shaun Edwards, “They were pre-planned and intelligence-led.”

Supporters in the London courtroom tweeted: “It was great to see  #MoazzamBegg again. Even under such circumstances he was smiling and looked well.”

Protesters gathered afterwards outside the West Midlands Police Headquarters, where Begg is imprisoned.

Begg was arrested the very next day after he published an article, “The real reason behind the confiscation of my passport” on the website of the human rights organization that he founded, CagePrisoners, which states:

“In the summer of 2012 I wrote about the first of my two visits to Syria to investigate leads into cases of British and American complicity in the rendition of terrorism suspects to the regime of Bashar al-Asad. This followed on from something I learned first-hand from CIA and US military intelligence agents who threatened to send me to Egypt or Syria if I failed to co-operate with them during my time in the Bagram prison.”

After his release, Begg began campaigning for prisoners detained at Guantanamo and others held in secret detention sites or who had disappeared after being rendered to countries like Libya, Egypt, and Syria, as part of his work for CagePrisoners.

“We conducted numerous investigations into recurrent reports of extreme torture carried out by the Syrian regime and discovered the complicity of the governments of the US, Canada, France, Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Britain. I was also constantly being invited to speak all over the world about issues pertaining to Guantanamo, torture, the rule of law and the war on terror… In July last year, I visited Syria where I met numerous former prisoners who had been held by the Asad regime as well as a few victims of US and UK rendition…

“A few months later, in October 2012, I was called by an MI5 officer who said they wanted to talk to me about my views on the situation in Syria after having read my article… At the end of the meeting I was assured by MI5 that my proposed return to Syria to continue my work would not be hindered, and it wasn’t. Subsequently, I travelled to Syria without incident… I am certain that the only reason I am being continually harassed – something that began long before any visit to Syria – is because CagePrisoners and I are at the forefront of investigations and assertions based on hard evidence that British governments, past and present, have been willfully complicit in torture.”

Last month, British police confiscated his iPad, which contained his report. Three weeks later the British government confiscated his passport stating that his previous visits to Syria had constituted involvement in terrorism. Cageprisoners’s media officer, Cerie Bulliyant states that “the timing [of his arrest] coincides with the planned release of a CAGE report on Syria and a major news piece that was due to be televised soon.”

Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain write: “Crucially, it appears that Begg was given explicit permission to take this trip to Syria by Britain’s MI5… That’s all independent of the bizarre spectacle of charging someone with “terrorism” offenses for allegedly helping rebels which the US government itself is aiding and for whom intervention was advocated by the US president as recently as last year.”

Ghaliyaa Haqq, editor of Free Detainees stated that she is dismayed by Begg’s arrest:

“What would bring even more dismay would be the silence of the human rights community and the Ummah itself. We can’t let that happen! Remember, this is a man who spent nightmarish years in Bagram, and Guantanamo.  He was terribly abused, yet when he was finally released – did he go off with his family and live the rest of his life in peace? NO!  He is not the sort of man who could do that – he could never ignore his brothers and sisters undergoing terrible struggle and injustice. So he didn’t.  We can’t either – we cannot let this happen to him again.”

Asim Qureshi, Research Director of CagePrisoners said: “We are disgusted that Moazzam Begg is being retraumatised with the same guilt by association accusations that resulted in his unlawful incarceration in Guantanamo Bay.  We fully support our colleague and see his arrest as politically motivated and as part of a campaign to criminalize legitimate activism.”

UK-based human rights investigator Nawaz Hanif told The Intercept: “The arrest of Moazzam Begg under British anti-terror laws is… utilizing vague terror allegations to stifle investigations into abuses of power….It is pertinent to ask British authorities why Moazzam is being arrested a day before his report on torture and rendition is to be released, and over a year since he last stepped foot in Syria.”

In a statement CAGE said, “This arrest forms a part of the general approach by the UK security agencies which considers any travel to Syria as suspicious. There has been a concerted campaign of harassment against Muslim individuals and charities who get involved in supporting the victims of the Syrian crisis. We do not accept involvement by Moazzam Begg in any form of terrorism. He is simply one of many individuals and charities involved in Syria being viewed with suspicion in an effort to send a message to the wider Muslim community that working in Syria is a no go area for them.

“Moazzam is a leading figure internationally on issues relating to due process and human rights. His advocacy on behalf of the Guantanamo Bay detainees has been recognized across the world, resulting in government’s accepting detainees who could not be returned to their countries of origin. We are also concerned that the Police and the security services are using the wide scope of terrorism laws, and applying them in Syria to set precedents that will make legitimate activity unlawful in future.”

“Everything is terrorism and for those who fear losing their jobs and government funding, terrorism is everything. It is time to change the narrative,” wrote Begg in January of 2014.

In his last Facebook update, posted just hours before his arrest, Begg wrote: “Sometimes knowing too much can be a curse.”