"Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a victim of lies", says Yvonne Ridley

By M. Khalid Rehman, Karachi

During Musharraf's rule, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan Mulla Abdus Salaam Zaeef was caught by Pakistani authorities and handed over to the Americans. He was sent to the Guantanamo camp but was freed in 2005. The United Nations removed his name from its list of terrorists in July 2010.

Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, was also kidnapped by Pakistani authorities and sold to the US. She has been convicted in a US federal court of assault with intent to murder her US interrogators. She is incarcerated in New York and is awaiting a likely sentence of life in prison, which will be announced on September 23. Her entire case was built on lies, says Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist and war correspondent to Afghanistan told a group of Pakistani journalists at the residence of Dr Aafia's sister in Karachi on September 14.

Talking to journalists in Karachi, Yvonne Ridely said, "Some lies started wars--like President Bush's war on Iraq; and some lies destroy lives of individuals--like the statement that a frail woman imprisoned in a cell snatched the gun of an American soldier and tried to attack him."

Yvonne Ridley expressed surprise that the American trial judge in Aafia's case was not interested in the Aafia's past record, and had insisted only on knowing what had happened during those few minutes in the cell where Aafia was held in Afghanistan. The entire case is a big farce as it was never proved that Aafia fired any shots or even picked the gun. The British journalist said, "Lying comes easy to Americans."

Ridley interviewed Afghan police chief and other officials. She found that the translation of their statements in the court were distorted. "It was a mis-trial. Aafia is the most wronged woman on the planet in history, She was separated from her children, and so brutally abused that she has lost her mind. How can you try in a court of law a woman who is not in her right mind because of the tortures she was submitted to in military custody and from whom her children had been snatched?. Is this American definition of the rule of law?" Ridley remarked.

This makes one think why can the United States release a Taliban government functionary but afraid of releasing a mother of three little children?