To be honest, I can hardly express sufficiently my shock at the news that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist who was rendered to the U.S. to face a trial after she reportedly tried -- and failed -- to shoot two U.S. soldiers in Ghazni, Afghanistan in July 2008, has been sentenced to 86 years in prison.
Such a disproportionate sentence would be barbaric, even if Aafia Siddiqui had killed the soldiers she shot at, but as she missed entirely, and was herself shot twice in the abdomen, it simply doesn't make sense. Moreover, the sentencing overlooks claims by her lawyers that her fingerprints were not even on the gun that she allegedly fired, and, even more significantly, hints at a chilling cover-up, mentioned everywhere except at Dr. Siddiqui's trial earlier this year. Seen this way, her sudden reappearance in Ghazni in July 2008, the shooting incident, the trial and the conviction were designed to hide the fact that, for five years and four months, from March 2003, when she and her three children were reportedly kidnapped in Karachi, she was held in secret U.S. detention -- possibly in the US prison at Bagram, Afghanistan -- where she was subjected to horrendous abuse.
The truth about Aafia Siddiqui's story, as I have mentioned in previous articles here, here and here, is difficult to discern, but too many unanswered questions had already been brushed off before this vile sentence was delivered, which involve not only Dr. Siddiqui, but also two of her three children, Ahmed and Mariam, who only resurfaced last September, and in April this year. The whereabouts of her third child, Suleiman, who was just a baby when she first disappeared, has never been disclosed, and there are fears that he was killed when she was initially kidnapped.
As for Mariam, an article at the time of her reappearance stated that she "claim[ed] she was kept in a 'cold, dark room' for seven years," allegedly in Bagram, and in late August 2008, Michael G. Garcia, the attorney general of the southern region of New York, "confirmed in a letter to Siddiqui's sister, Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui, that her son, Ahmed, had been in the custody of the FBI since 2003 and that he was currently in the custody of the Karzai government in Afghanistan," even though the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, had previously claimed that Washington "had no information regarding the children." The article added that Ahmed was finally released to the custody of Siddiqui's family in Pakistan in September 2009, and later "gave a statement to police in Lahore that he had been held in a juvenile prison in Afghanistan for years."
Like everything in the story of Aafia Siddiqui, which remains, in many ways, the most opaque story in the whole of the "War on Terror," it is difficult to say what is true and what is not, but these accounts, as well as eyewitness accounts from other prisoners, including the British resident and former Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, who has stated that he saw Aafia Siddiqui in Bagram, serve only to demonstrate that, not only is an 86-year sentence the most abominable miscarriage of justice, but also that it meshes perfectly with the notion that this whole sad story is an enormous cover-up. As I asked six months ago:
If Aafia Siddiqui was indeed held in secret US custody for over five years, was the story of the attempted shooting of the U.S. soldiers in July 2008 a cynical set-up, designed to ensure that she could be transferred to the U.S. and tried, convicted and imprisoned without the true story coming to light?
For someone once touted as a significant al-Qaeda operative, it is, to say the least, convenient that she has been sentenced to 86 years in prison on charges that -- beyond the prosecutors' claim that she was an al-Qaeda supporter and a danger to the U.S. -- completely ignored her alleged role in al-Qaeda. The entire court case also avoided the valid presumption that, if she was indeed regarded as an al-Qaeda operative, it would not be surprising if, like many dozens of other "high-value detainees," she suffered years of torture in U.S. custody, and then, somehow, had to be disposed of.
While some of these prisoners ended up in Guantánamo, and others were stealthily delivered on one-way trips to prisons in their home countries, Aafia Siddiqui ended up in New York, rendered -- there is no other word -- from Afghanistan. And although she urged her supporters in court to remain calm yesterday, telling them, "Don't get angry. Forgive Judge Berman," it may be that, in delivering what he referred to as an "appropriate" sentence of "significant incarceration," Judge Richard Berman may have done just what the CIA wanted.
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In California, the penalty for attempted murder:
_______The penalty is life in prison depending on the circumstances and court decision, there is no single penalty, the court decides. Premeditated attempted murder could be 10 years on a 25 year sentence (good time + parole) or could be death if it was a child or minor or the like. Self defense related attempted murder could be 1-10 years sentence.
Carry a Constitution with you, so you can read it to the police as they spray you in the face with pepper spray.
Even in the old Soviet Union, the sentence for murder was
5 years in the Gulags. Whether you survived was another matter. Prisoners food was rationed to a barely livable calorie content with even inactivity, and then they worked dawn to dusk as slave labor, often in freezing weather. Those who made it through their 5 year sentence went into internal exile in Siberia and other remote regions so they would not become a political threat to totalitarian Russia. Political dissent was treated more harshly than murder, but criminals could return home to the cites after their sentence.
It seems that this woman being treated so harshly here is serving a need for someone in the WOT system, so maybe this is the reason for her harsh sentence. This raises questions about why she was never charged with terrorism.
As a cover up it cannot work, injustice meant to be seen?
No one who knows anything about the US "Justice" system should be surprised at the 86 year sentence, The US "justice" system is notorious for its draconian sentences and mean spirited punitiveness.
That the US is not going to let Aafia Siddiqui ever get in the position where she is able to relate her experiences to the world outside is a certainty. I predict that she will be held under special administrative measures in a supermax prison with it being a condition of anyone being allowed to speak to her, including family and lawyers that they sign agreements not relate anything she says to the outside world. Any person failing to honour such an agreement would get the full Lynne Stewart treatment.
However when such incommunicado conditions are imposed all rational people should see them as proof that the Americans have done to her something so horrible that they cannot bear that knowledge of it to come to light.
It may be that those determining Aafia's treatment rationalize it as a cover up to prevent damage to the reputation of the US, but it can't possible succeed as too much contradictory information is in the public domain. That Aafia and all three of her children disappeared from a Pakistan street at the same time is an incontrovertible fact but the US and their Afpakistan allies have made the mistake of allowing two of the children to survive and even returned them to their family . Sooner or later one or both of these children will tell the truth about being held by US, Afghan and Pakistan authorities and this will make the US assertion that they did not have Aafia herself in their custody absurd and make it obvious that the whole Kabuki play about the US rushing to take this dangerous terrorist into custody after she was found acting suspiciously in an Afghan street is a clumsy attempt to make her being in US custody official while concealing that they had her prior to this. In fact according to Yvonne Ridley Ahmad Siddiqui has already given a statement that he was held in the presence of uniformed US soldiers as well as Pakistanis and Afghans.
I suggest that Aafia Siddiqui's show trial in New York was one of that type where the workings of injustice were meant to be visible albeit through a little concealing smoke. The purpose was to send a message of hatred and contempt to all Muslims, Arabs and people who oppose the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. It is to show the power that the US has to destroy lives of those who hate them, no matter how justified that hate. Those who orchestrated this circus want those at whom its message is directed to know that it is a show trial of Stalin/Hitler quality and that they are powerless to do anything about it.
the Deep state
does it seem like whatever the official conciliatory propaganda maybe, the Deep State always manages to turn up this war against islam another notch. As if to dare em - bring it on - blowback, actively promoted
Who is the the Deep State. The elite that run the Pentagon and manage the mil-industrial complex. Those that thrive on the perpetual Long War. I heard a Vietnam war vet US General proclaim in 1980, the Cold war was going to be followed by a war against islam.
Yvonne Ridley Human rights campaigner : Another reason to declare her trial a mis-trial. Judge Richard Berman is the one who should be charged. Ignorance of the law is no excuse Your Honour and at the moment you stand guilty as a law breaker not a law maker for dragging Aafia through an illegal trial, the process of which was flawed from beginning to end. it all happened on Judge Berman's watch.
_______Camus10
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Andy, this story makes me so sad for my nation.
To accuse this woman of terrorism without coming up with any proof and kidnap her out of her own country and kill or steal her baby in the process, and then imprison her in horrible conditions along with her other two children for five years, and then shoot her twice when she tries to get away, and then this Judge Richard Berman, sentences here to 86 years in prison to cover up the entire affair. This is just like things we read about Hitler doing in Nazi Germany, or Stalin doing in the USSR, or dozens of other petty tyrants doing around the world at various times.
I am so sad that this nation that I once was so proud to be a citizen of has stooped to such cruelty and sick, hate filled policies.
Yes, we searched for terrorists and we found them, and they are us. Policies and actions such as these are destroying the fabric that holds together the USA.
Until such abuses end, the nation itself will continue to decline until there is nothing left except a nasty, cruel place where nobody wants to live, or be a part of anymore.
Such terrible things will not serve us well.
Thanks for bringing us this sad story Andy.