Problem Chylde: Learning & Writing

So let’s review the circumstances surrounding Aafia Siddiqui’s arrest alleged in the video news report:

A dangerous super-plotting Al-Qaeda woman goes to Afghanistan, makes some mayhem, and is held behind the most secure of all divisions between her and Afghani police officers — a curtain.  One of the officers, keeping fierce and constant watch on her so she doesn’t go all Jet Li on their asses, takes off his gun and places it on the ground.  Siddiqui, criminal mastermind and at all times a ninja, drags the gun behind the impenetrable magic curtain and uses it to fire at the officers.  She then gets charged for attacking the officers and for the bunches of contraband about explosives, firearms, and U.S. buildings she had stashed together in her purse before they decided to surround her in draperies.

Makes sense, right?

The Wikipedia article claims that Siddiqui and her first husband were working in collusion with Saudi nationals, buying copious amounts of military armor to send to Pakistan, supporting charities posing as fronts for terrorist organizations, and falsifying reports on their professional standing.  However, Siddiqui’s first husband Mohammed Khan has been dropped from the terror watch list since 2006, according to his stub.

Her second husband as alleged by U.S. officials, Ammar al-Baluchi, is detained in Guantanamo Bay.  He is the nephew of The Originator of All Terrorist Things, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed.  While imprisoned and tortured in Guantanamo Bay, Mohammed named Siddiqui along with Khan and Adnan el Shukrijama.  el Shukrijama appears to be still at large.

Reports on Siddiqui are conflicting and confusing.  For example in August 2004, the Daily Times in Pakistan reported that Siddiqui, a microbiologist, traveled to Monrovia to prepare a report concerning the trafficking of conflict diamonds from Africa as an alternative monetary source for terrorist organizations, allegedly during the period where international bank accounts linked to terrorist organizations were heavily monitored.  However the same source in August of this year questions the earlier assertion, claiming Siddiqui, the cognitive neuroscientist, may have had her identity stolen and circumstances manipulated to make her a fall guy (so to speak) for terrorist ties.  (I highlight the two job descriptions because it is alleged by U.S. and U.N. officials that during the monetary transactions to charities, Siddiqui held herself out to be a microbiologist.  The Boston Globe also parrots the U.N. report and job description when describing the diamond report.)

Around July this year, British journalist Yvonne Ridley told the media that there was speculation that U.S. officials had detained a woman in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, known as Prisoner 650.

Ridley said she first learnt about the woman while reading a book by Guantanamo ex-detainee Moazzam Begg. Ridley added that one of the four Arabs who escaped from the Bagram cell in July 2005 also told a television channel that he had heard a woman’s cries and screams in the prison but never saw her. “I call her the Grey Lady of Bagram because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her,” she said.

The woman is registered as Prisoner number 650 and the US officials can’t deny the fact, Ridley said. “I demand that the US military free the Grey Lady immediately. We don’t know her identity, we don’t know her state of mind and we don’t know the extent of the abuse or torture she has been subjected to,” Ridley said.

Suspicions mounted as more officials began demanding answers about the woman detained in Bagram, among a scheme of human rights abuses and detentions violating international law.  Most damning is the suspicion that Pakistani officials captured Siddiqui and handed her over to U.S. intelligence officials, who took her off the map to Bagram for interrogation.

It was after this speculation that the arrest to which I referred took place.  Where the dangerous Aafia Siddiqui, scientist of unknown calibre, with three two children who have gone missing, attempted to shoot an American interrogator — the curtain story.

Both the boy and Dr. Siddiqui, a 36-year-old MIT-trained behavioural neuroscientist, were picked up by Afghan National Police earlier this month. When she was apprehended, the prosecution claimed Dr. Siddiqui had in her possession maps of New York, a list of potential targets that included the Statue of Liberty and Times Square, and detailed chemical, biological and radiological weapon information that has been seen only in a handful of terrorist cases.

The United States then charged her with attempted murder and assault, also making averments to her possible ties to terrorist suspects and speaking of all the materials in her bag. A woman carries everything damning in her purse, you see, especially one of those scientifically-educated Al-Qaeda mastermind women.

So what’s the problem?  We have all this evidence that this woman did something horribly wrong.  It’s all clear and airtight.  Why isn’t she under the jail, you ask?  Well as of November, Siddiqui was unfit to stand trial.

According to a Nov. 6, 2008, confidential forensic examination from a federal medical center in Carswell, Texas, mental health professionals have concluded, “Ms. Siddiqui is not currently competent to proceed as a result of her mental disease, which renders her unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against her or to assist properly in her defense.”

An excerpt of the evaluation was mentioned in the judge’s order calling for a Wednesday hearing to address her mental health to stand trial.

We should not credit her mysterious (likely torturous) disappearance and violent (likely torturous) reappearance for this unfitness.  Because America doesn’t torture.  Thought I lost you for a moment in thinking this could possibly be a torture case.  Because it isn’t.

So are you afraid of Aafia Siddiqui?  She’s afraid of you.

Defense lawyer Elizabeth Fink said her client should be tested at a New York hospital. She said Siddiqui has refused to leave her jail cell, interact with her lawyers or open legal mail.

“She has mental illness,” Fink said. “She’s psychotic.”

But the judge said the extent of her mental difficulties has not been fully analyzed and requires more extensive testing.

Berman said she also must receive proper medical care for injuries sustained when she was wounded during the encounter in Afghanistan.

Fink said Siddiqui did not want to appear in court in part because she was videotaped when she was examined by a doctor on Sept. 9 and she has become convinced the videotape was distributed publicly over the Internet.

Siddiqui said she would be ashamed to appear in court because she believed people had seen her naked online, Fink said.

“She’s not rational,” Fink said.

Are you clear on what she did to deserve being detained?  I’m not.  I’d like to say I understand why people may have forgotten about her remaining detained in New York while incompetent to stand trial.  I’d like to say I understand why people want to remember.

But honestly I see a young woman’s life wrapped in geopolitical confusion, a woman who has paid for this confusion and fearmongering with her sanity and freedom, her family and occupation, her being and existence.  I cannot fear her.  I cannot forget her, and I cannot ignore her.  I can only try to figure out why she’s there, and what stops anyone else from joining her where she is now.

She deserves either justice or peace.  So far, the War on Terror has given her neither.