2. The meaning of international law

Let’s begin with clarity about the issue.

The people of Pakistan do not demand that Aafia should be released unconditionally. They can only demand that she should be tried in according with the globally respected norms of international law and that her case should be decided after a free trial. This is the true demand of the people of Pakistan and if this is misrepresented before the world, especially before the people of America, then the future of civilization may be at stake through accumulation of undue power by the ARI and likeminded groups inside America and the weakening of the cause of human rights and international law by forums in the rest of the world.

The real issue, therefore, is that of globally respected norms of international law and human rights. Aafia is not the only victim: more than 4000 persons are reported to be missing in Pakistan alone. In a few cases the authorities have even blatantly admitted having abducted these people but even such acts have been given legal coverage by the various legislations which the American Government has passed and which it supposes to be applicable beyond its own territory.

Of these thousands of cases, the case of Aafia is so complex that by unraveling just this one we may be able to understand various aspects of several other cases that concern the international forums of human rights today. Those forums may lend us effective support only if we, all the people of Pakistan together, could help them in helping us. Also, the case of Aafia is so shocking that it may end up moving even those who may not have truly grasped until now the significance of the threat that looms over the human civilization today. The threat is terror, but it is manifold and we must understand it rationally, like highly moral members of the civilized world, if we wish to contribute in saving, not only humanity, but also ourselves.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist, disappeared from Karachi in March 2003. She was thirty-one years old at that time and had three children, aged one month to four years. They also went missing.

The American media was flaunting her as a woman required by the FBI for investigation and reports leaked into the media that contrary to official statements, Aafia had been abducted by the Pakistani authorities who handed her over to the Americans and she was now already in the custody of American authorities in Afghanistan who were subjecting her to rape, torture and unspeakable indignities. According to one report, she was kept in an all-male prison with no toilet facilities so that she had to take baths, etc, in full view of others.

These reports gained enormous weight by July 2008. Question has been raised from the floor of the British parliament and the news was flashing in the international media (although it may have remained in a relatively low profile in the American media for various reasons).

The allegations were of such nature, and were raised on such levels, that the least that may have been expected could have been a direct response from the American President with an order to initiate an immediate inquiry.

Instead, the American authorities, when they finally admitted of having the custody of Dr. Aafia after denying it several times, produced her in an American court in early August and claimed that they had arrested her in Afghanistan on July 17, i.e. after the world had made a hue and cry about her alleged capture and mistreatment by the American authorities.

New allegations were brought out against her but the American story about her capture was bizarre, to say the least: it was claimed that the American authorities had arrested her in Afghanistan on July 17th because she was found loitering around with instructions about how to make a bomb and details of American installations in her purse. She was also charged for snatching a pistol from an American soldier while in custody and firing two rounds which “missed.” According to the American story, she was then fired at. This was given as an explanation of the wound which was still in such a bad condition that blood oozed out of it even in the court, and the judge excused her from standing up. The judge himself found some apparent discrepancy in the chronology (and this may be a possible reason why the news about her “arrest” was kept in a low profile in the American media until the auspicious moment of the Independence Day of Pakistan several days later.

We must be clear at least to ourselves whether the other side of the story, the one upheld by the international forums of human rights prior to the American admission of Aafia’s arrest, may hold sufficient weight to be heard in a court of justice. If Aafia had gone undercover, as the FBI claims, then she is unlikely to have come out for some terrorist activity on July 17, as the FBI also claims. That was just the time when the hype in the international media was at its peak. Why would she risk getting caught and exposed at this precise moment after being in hiding for five long years? If she had gone undercover five years ago, as the FBI claims, then July 2008 was the one moment in all these five years when she should stay undercover and let the pressure build on America to give fair trial to the thousands of the unlawfully detained accused for whom she, in this case, would have had natural sympathy.

This is besides the fact that the fairytale story about her arrest as stated by the FBI is a bit too far-fetched: trying to blow up the American installations with a page of instructions about how to assemble a bomb instead of a bomb itself?

She is now on trial in the United States and what is unfair about this whole business is not just one thing but many. First of all, the law and procedure under which she is being tried doesn’t give her access to rights and privileges to which every accused is entitled in a civilized court. Through special American legislations, these rights have been taken away from those who are tried in connection with the so-called War on Terror. Under these circumstances, the American courts have become just like tribal jirgas, if not worse, and that is the first concern of all human rights forums today. Conviction by such a court may not be a genuine conviction which could meet the long-held norms of the international law and justice.

Secondly, someone seems to be making a deliberate effort to side track the main issue, which in this case is the allegation that was raised against the United State by the world community in the case of Aafia, before the FBI produced her in a court of law. The charges levied against Dr. Aafia (which include several new charges which had never been mentioned before) are likely to be seen by the free world as an effort by the American government to avoid the necessity of addressing the serious allegations raised against it by the independent media of the free world, which is still outside the American control.

The grim unfairness of the situation may be judged from just one report which appeared in the newspapers in Pakistan on August 10, 2008. It was a report about the meeting of a representative of the Pakistani embassy with Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and it stated that “on the advice of her defense attorney, she could not give details about the whereabouts of her children nor describe her travails while in US custody in Afghanistan.” Obviously, this advice must have been given to her in her own interest, which means that doing otherwise could have affected her case adversely before the court. That alone is enough to show the grim unfairness of the laws and procedures under which she is being tried (and a shocking absence of shame or intelligence in the statement by the representative of the Pakistani embassy, which didn’t reflect any awareness of this).

The other suspicion which arises from this report is whether someone is withholding Aafia’s children? Uneasy questions may arise in the minds of people around the world: are these children being used as hostages to pressurize her into admitting something of which she isn’t guilty – or to stop her from revealing something which the American authorities do not want the world to know? Why they cannot be sent back home? Do they know something which the American authorities don’t want the world to know? Are they undergoing plastic surgery too, to cover up any broken limbs and cigarette scars which might have occurred in the process of “interrogating” their mother? Is one, or two, of them already dead – killed by the alleged tormentors of their mother?

The travails of Aafia may not be different from those of more than 4000 “missing persons”: people who are supposed to have been abducted from their homes in Pakistan. There may be many more from other places. As far as the issue of bringing these “missing persons” to fair trials is concerned, the people of Pakistan don’t stand alone. The entire international community except the United States of America stands with us on this moral issue.

Next: the people of Pakistan