Aafia Siddiqui: Difference between revisions

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Aafia Siddiqui (born March 2, 1972, in Karachi, Pakistan) is a Pakistani Muslim neuroscientist, accused of being an al-Qaeda member. In February 2010, she was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and attempting to kill U.S. soldiers and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who were seeking to interrogate her while she was in custody.^[1]

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumna and Brandeis Ph.D.,^[1] and mother of three, she had disappeared in March 2003. Her disappearance followed the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, alleged chief planner of the September 11 attacks and the uncle of her second husband, and the issuance by the FBI of a global "wanted for questioning" alert for her. In 2004, U.N. investigators identified her as an al-Qaeda member, and the FBI said she was a "terrorist facilitator" and listed her as one of the seven "most wanted" al-Qaeda fugitives.

She resurfaced when she was arrested July 17, 2008, by the Afghan National Police. The following day, when U.S. military personnel arrived at the Afghan facility meeting-room where she was being held, she came out from behind a curtain, picked up an M-4 assault rifle at the feet of one of the soldiers, and fired two shots at them, missing them. An officer returned fire, hitting her in the torso, and she was subdued. Siddiqui was charged with two counts of attempted murder, armed assault, using and carrying a firearm, and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees.^[3][1] She was convicted in February 2010, in a Manhattan court, on all counts. She faces a minimum sentence of 30 years and a maximum of life in prison on the firearm charge, and could also get up to 20 years for each attempted murder and firearms charge and up to 8 years on each of the remaining assault counts when she is sentenced on May 6, 2010.^[4][2]

Siddiqui's family has asserted that she does not have any connection to al-Qaeda, that the U.S. secretly detained her for five years, and that she was tortured and raped, all claims that the U.S. and Pakistan flatly deny. After her conviction, thousands of people protested in Pakistan, and the Taliban threatened to kill a captured American soldier in retaliation.

Siddiqui is one of three siblings. She was raised first in Zambia until the age of eight, and then in Karachi, Pakistan. Her father, Muhammad Salay Siddiqui, was a British-trained neurosurgeon, and her mother, Ismet (née Faroochi), is a now-retired homemaker who previously performed social work.^[5][6] Her brother Mohammad Azi Siddiqui, an architect, and his wife, a pediatrician, live in Sugarland, Texas.^[6] Her sister, Fowzia Siddiqui, is a Harvard-trained neurologist married to Nassar Jamali, and worked in Sinai Hospital, Baltimore, before returning to Pakistan.^[7]

Siddiqui moved to Texas in the United States on a student visa in 1990, joining her brother.^[6][8] After attending the University of Houston for three semesters, she transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[6][7]

During her years at MIT, she was regarded as religious by her colleagues. She joined the Muslim Students' Association,^[9][10] through which she met several committed Islamists, including Suheil Laher, its imam, who publicly advocated Islamization and jihad before 9/11. For a short time, Laher was also the head of the Islamic charity Care International, which was believed to have collected funds for jihadist fighters.^[5] She wrote three guides for teaching Islam. During that time period, she solicited money for Al Kifah Refugee Center, now known as an al-Qaeda charitable front and al-Qaeda’s U.S operational headquarters, tied to Osama bin Laden and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.^[11] She also took a 12-hour pistol training course at the Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club.^[12]

In 1992, as an MIT sophomore, Siddiqui received a Carroll L. Wilson Award for her research proposal "Islamization in Pakistan and its Effects on Women".^[6][13] As a junior, she received a $1,200 City Days fellowship through MIT's program to help clean up Cambridge elementary school playgrounds. During her undergraduate years, she lived in McCormick Hall and worked at the MIT libraries, graduating from MIT in 1995 with a degree in biology.^[1][6][14] A year after she graduated, Siddiqui wrote an article for the MIT Information Systems newsletter about the File Transfer Protocol and the then-emerging World Wide Web.

In 1995 she had an arranged marriage to anesthesiologist Amjad Mohammed Khan from Karachi, whom she had never seen.^[5] They were married over the phone.^[15] Her husband came to the U.S., and they lived first in Lexington, Massachusetts, and then in the Mission Hill section of Roxbury in Boston.^[9] In 1999, while living in Boston, Siddiqui, her husband, and her sister founded the nonprofit Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching.^[6][16] She attended a mosque outside the city, where she stored copies of the Koran and other Islamic literature that she distributed.^[17] She went on to graduate study in cognitive neuroscience at Brandeis University,^[1] receiving a Ph.D. degree in 2001 for her dissertation, titled "Separating the Components of Imitation."^[6] She also co-authored several journal articles.

Siddiqui was one of six alleged al-Qaeda figures who were involved in buying diamonds in West Africa immediately prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks, according to a dossier prepared by U.N. investigators for the 9/11 Commission.^[18] Alan White, former chief investigator of a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Liberia, said she was in Monrovia, Liberia, on June 16, 2001, using the alias of 'Fahrem', as she visited on behalf of al-Qaeda's leadership to buy blood diamonds worth $19 million, which were used to fund al-Qaeda operations.^[5][7] Al-Qaeda's purported goal was to have easily convertible, untraceable assets after the first U.S.-led moves freezing al-Qaeda bank accounts and other assets worldwide in 1999.^[7]

In the summer of 2001 the couple moved to Malden, Massachusetts.^[9] According to Khan, after the September 11 attacks Siddiqui insisted on leaving the U.S., saying that it was unsafe for them and their children to remain because the U.S. government was abducting Muslim children.^[19] He has also said that she wanted him to move to Afghanistan, and work as a medic for the mujahideen.^[20]

In May 2002, the FBI questioned Siddiqui and her husband regarding their purchase over the internet of $10,000 worth of night vision goggles, body armor, and military manuals including The Anarchist's Arsenal, Fugitive, Advanced Fugitive, and How to Make C-4.^[15][7][20] Khan claimed that these were for hunting and camping expeditions. On June 26, 2002, the couple returned to Pakistan.^[5][15][1]

In August 2002 the couple's marriage reached a breaking point. Kahn says Siddiqui was abusive and manipulative throughout their seven years of marriage. He also said that she had a violent personality and extremist views, leading him to suspect her of involvement in jihadi activities.^[19] Khan went to Siddiqui's parents' home, and said he intended to divorce her. An argument took place between Khan and her father, and Siddiqui's father suffered a fatal heart attack on August 15, 2002.^[9][7] A few weeks later Siddiqui gave birth to the last of their three children, Suleman (b. 2002). The two older children, Ahmed (b. 1996) and Maryam (b. 1998), are American citizens.^[5] Their divorce was finalized on October 21, 2002.^[9][20]

On December 25, 2002, Siddiqui made a trip to the U.S., saying that she was looking for a job. She left the U.S. on January 2, 2003.^[1] The FBI suspects that the real purpose of her trip was to open a P.O. box for an alleged al-Qaeda operative, Majid Khan, who is suspected of having planned attacks on gas stations and underground fuel-storage tanks in the Baltimore, Maryland—Washington, DC area on the orders of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed.^[7][5][21] Siddiqui listed Majid Khan as a co-owner, and falsely identified him as her husband.^[20] The key of the P.O. box was later found in the possession of Uzair Paracha, who was convicted of providing material support to al-Qaeda, and sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in 2006.^[22] Siddiqui's ex-husband has also said he was suspicious of Siddiqui's intentions, as she made her trip at a time when U.S. universities are closed.^[19]

Before her disappearance, she was working at Aga Khan University in Karachi. On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, alleged chief planner of the September 11 attacks, was arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Khalid reportedly revealed Siddiqui's name during his interrogation as a key al-Qaeda operative in Boston,^[23][24] and shortly thereafter a series of related arrests began. On the same day as Muhammad's arrest, Siddiqui emailed a former professor at Brandeis University and expressed interest in working in the U.S., citing lack of options in Karachi for women of her academic background. A few days later, afraid the FBI would find her in Karachi, she left her parents' house along with her three children.^[25] She took a taxi to the airport, ostensibly to catch a morning flight to Islamabad to visit her uncle, but disappeared.^[15][5]

Siddiqui's whereabouts and activities from March 2003 to July 2008 are a matter of dispute. In March 2003, the FBI issued a global "wanted for questioning" alert for Siddiqui and her ex-husband, Amjad Khan. While Siddiqui remained missing, Khan was questioned and subsequently released by the FBI.^[15] Multiple allegations were made against Siddiqui, to the effect that she was a "courier of blood diamonds and a financial fixer for al-Qaida".^[26] Khan believes she went into hiding after the global alert for her was issued.^[19][15] According to the U.S. and Khan, Siddiqui was at large, working on behalf of al-Qaeda.^[15][27]

On April 22, 2003, two U.S. federal law enforcement officials initially said Siddiqui had been taken into custody by Pakistani authorities. Pakistani officials never confirmed the arrest, however, and later that day the U.S. officials amended their earlier statements, saying new information made it "doubtful" she was in custody.^[28]

During her 'disappearance' Khan said he saw her at Islamabad airport in April 2003, as she disembarked from a flight with their son, and said he helped Inter-Services Intelligence identify her. Two years later he said he saw her in a Karachi traffic jam. Siddiqui's maternal uncle, Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi, says he met her in January 2008 when she came to visit him in Islamabad, and asked for his help in order to cross over into Afghanistan where she thought she would be safe in the hands of the Taliban.^[15][20] Faruqi said that he immediately notified his sister, Siddiqui's mother, who came in the next day to meet her daughter. He said that Siddiqui stayed with them for two days.^[29]

In 2003-04, the FBI and the Pakistani government said they did not know Siddiqui's whereabouts. ^[30][15][14] U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft referred to her as being the most wanted woman in the world, an Al Qaeda "facilitator" who posed a "clear and present danger to the U.S.", and on May 26, 2004, the U.S. listed her among the seven "most wanted" al-Qaeda fugitives.^[23][31]

Family asserts Siddiqui detained by Pakistan and the U.S.

Siddiqui's family said that she does not have any connections to al-Qaeda, and that the U.S. secretly detained her in Afghanistan after she disappeared in Pakistan in March 2003 with her three children. They point to comments by former Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, detainees who say they believe a woman held at the prison while they were there was Siddiqui.^[23] Her sister said that she had been raped, and tortured for five years.^[34][35] According to Yvonne Ridley, best known for her capture by the Taliban and subsequent conversion to Islam after release, Siddiqui spent those years in solitary confinement at Bagram as Prisoner 650. In February 2009, Siddiqui's ex-husband told a Pakistani newspaper that most of the claims in Pakistani press reports related to her and their children were being propagated to garner public support and sympathy for her, but that they were one-sided and in most instances untrue.^[19]

Siddiqui herself gave conflicting explanations, alternately claiming that she was kidnapped by U.S. intelligence and Pakistani intelligence, while also claiming that she was working for Pakistani intelligence during this time.^[36] Siddiqui reportedly said that she worked at the Karachi Institute of Technology in 2005, was in Afghanistan in the winter of 2007, stayed for a time during her disappearance in Quetta, Pakistan, and was given shelter by different people.^[37]

In late March 2003, Pakistani news reports said Pakistani authorities had detained Siddiqui, and had questioned her with FBI agents, but Pakistani authorities denied the reports.^[23] An Afghan intelligence official said he believes that Siddiqui was working with Jaish-e-Mohammed (the "Army of God), a Pakistani Islamic mujahedeen military group that fights in Afghanistan.^[38]

The U.S. government said it had not held Siddiqui during that time period, and had no knowledge of her whereabouts from March 2003 until July 2008.^[39]

Children

Siddiqui's eldest son, Ahmad, resurfaced with her in 2008. He now lives with his aunt in Karachi, and has been prohibited from talking to the press by Siddiqui's family.^[15][38] An Afghan intelligence official in the Ministry of the Interior said the boy said that he and Siddiqui worked in an office in Pakistan, collecting money for poor people, and that they were later dispatched with maps and documents to Afghanistan.^[38]

Siddiqui has not explained clearly what happened to her two younger children, who are missing.^[36] She told one FBI agent that sometimes one has to take up a cause that is more important than one's children.^[37] She has alternated between saying that the two youngest children are dead, and that they are with her sister Fowzia.^[6] Her ex-husband believes that the children are in Karachi, and in contact with Siddiqui's family.^[19] He also says that the missing children were seen in Siddiqui's house in Karachi and Islamabad on several occasions since their alleged disappearance in 2003.^[19]

Siddiqui's ex-husband has unsuccessfully sought custody of their eldest son, and said that he suspected the two younger children were with Siddiqui's family, and not in U.S. detention.^[40]

Re-marriage

When she was arrested in 2008, she told FBI agents that she had re-married, marrying Ammar al-Baluchi. He is also known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and is a nephew of al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.^[36] Al-Baluchi. whom she says she married in March or April of 2003,^[41] was arrested on April 29, 2003, is in U.S. custody, and faces the death penalty for aiding the 9/11 hijackers. Siddiqui's marriage to al-Baluchi was denied by her family. But it was confirmed by Pakistani intelligence, the FBI, by Siddiqui herself (according to court records),^[15] by a defense psychologist,^[42] and by security sources and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family (according to BBC).^[43]

Siddiqui was encountered on the evening of July 17, 2008, by officers of the Ghazni Province Afghan National Police outside the Ghazni governor's compound.^[3] Wearing a burqua and with two small bags at her side, crouching on the ground, she aroused the suspicion of a man who feared she might be concealing a bomb under her burqua.^[5] He called the police.^[5] She was accompanied by a teenage boy about 12, who she claimed was an orphan she had adopted. She said her name was Saliha, that she was from Multan in Pakistan, and that the boy's name was Ali Hassan.^[5] Discovering that she did not speak either of Afghanistan's main dialects, Pashtu or Dari, the officers regarded her as suspicious.^[3]

The officers searched her handbag.^[3] They found that she had a number of documents written in Urdu and English describing the creation of explosives, chemical weapons, Ebola, dirty bombs, and radiological agents (which discussed mortality rates of certain of the weapons), and handwritten notes referring to a "mass casualty attack" that listed various U.S. locations and landmarks (including the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the New York City subway system).^{[1][3][5][44][45]} She also had documents detailing U.S. "military assets", excerpts from The Anarchist's Arsenal, a one-gigabyte digital media storage device (thumb drive) that contained over 500 electronic documents (including correspondence referring to attacks by "cells", describing the U.S. as an enemy, and discussing recruitment of jihadists and training), and "numerous chemical substances in gel and liquid form that were sealed in bottles and glass jars", according to the later complaint against her.^{[15][1][3][5][46]} She had with her about two pounds of sodium cyanide, a highly toxic poisonous substance.^[47] Other notes described various ways to attack enemies, including by destroying reconnaissance drones, using underwater bombs, and using gliders.^[1]

The officers arrested her, as she cursed them, and took her to a police station. DNA testing performed a short time later revealed that the boy was in fact was her eldest son, Ahmed.^[5]

The following day, on July 18, two FBI agents, a U.S. Army warrant officer, a U.S. Army captain, and their U.S. military interpreters arrived in Ghazni to interview Siddiqui at the Afghan National Police facility where she was being held.^[3][1][46] They entered a meeting room that was partitioned by a curtain, but did not realize that Siddiqui was standing unsecured behind the curtain.^[3][1] The warrant officer sat down adjacent to the curtain, and put his loaded M-4 assault rifle on the floor by his feet, next to the curtain.^[3]

Siddiqui drew back the curtain, picked up the M-4 assault rifle, and pointed it at the captain. “I could see the barrel of the rifle, the inner portion of the barrel of the weapon, that indicated to me that it was pointed straight at my head,” he said.^[46] She threatened them loudly in English, and yelled "Get the fuck out of here" and "May the blood of [unintelligible] be on your [head or hands]".^[3] He dove for cover to his left, as she yelled "Allah Akbar" and fired at least two shots at them, missing them^[46] An interpreter who was seated closest to her lunged at her, grabbed and pushed the rifle, and attempted to wrest it from her.^[3][1][46] At that point the warrant officer returned fire with a 9-millimeter pistol, hitting her in the torso, and one of the interpreters managed to wrestle the rifle away from her.^[3][26] During the ensuing struggle she initially struck and kicked the officers, while shouting in English that she wanted to kill Americans, and then lost consciousness.^[3][1]

She was taken to Bagram Air Base by helicopter in critical condition. When she arrived at the hospital she was 3 on Glasgow Coma Scale, but she underwent emergency surgery and recovered over the next two weeks.^[20]

Afghan police offered a competing version of the events, telling Reuters that U.S. troops had demanded she be handed over, disarmed the Afghans when they refused, and then shot Siddiqui mistakenly thinking she was a suicide bomber.^[48]

Siddiqui was charged on July 31, 2008, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York with assaulting with a deadly weapon, and with attempting to kill, U.S. personnel.^[15][3][49] She was indicted on September 3, 2008, on two counts of attempted murder of U.S. nationals, officers, and employees, assault with a deadly weapon, carrying and using a firearm, and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees.^[1]

Her trial was subject to a number of delays, the longest being six months in order to perform a psychiatric evaluation of claims that she was "going crazy", with hallucinations and crying fits. Three of four psychiatric experts concluded that she was faking her symptoms of mental illness.^[15] In April, 2009, Manhattan federal judge Richard Berman held that she was competent to stand trial.^[50]

The Pakistani government paid $2 million for the services of the three lawyers to defend Siddiqui during her trial.^[51] Many Siddiqui supporters were present during the proceedings, and outside the court dozens of people rallied to demand her release.^[52]

Siddiqui said she did not want Jews on the jury. She demanded that all prospective jurors be DNA-tested, and excluded from the jury at her trial:

"if they have a Zionist or Israeli background ... they are all mad at me ... I have a feeling everyone here is them—subject to genetic testing. They should be excluded, if you want to be fair."^[53]

Siddiqui's legal team said, in regard to her jury selection comments, that her incarceration had damaged her mind.^[54]

Prior to her trial, Siddiqui said she considered herself innocent of all charges, which she maintained she could prove, but refused to do in court.^[55] On January 11, 2010, Siddiqui told the Judge that she wanted to fire her legal team.^[56] Siddiqui told the judge that she would not cooperate with her attorneys. She also said she did not trust the judge, and that she was "boycotting the trial ... there are too many injustices. I’m out of this". Following her outburst she was removed from the court, though the judge said she would be allowed back, as she was entitled to be present at her trial.

Jury selection was completed and her trial began with opening arguments on January 19, 2010, in New York City.^{[57] [58][59][60][61][62]}

Prior to the jury entering the courtroom, Siddiqui told onlookers that she would not work with her lawyers, and that: "This isn't a fair court ... Why do I have to be here? ... There are many different versions of how this happened".^[63] She also said: "I have information about attacks, more than 9/11! ... I want to help the President to end this group, to finish them ... They are a domestic, U.S. group; they are not Muslim."^[64][65]

Three government witnesses testified first, out of a total of nine called by the prosecution: Army Captain Robert Snyder, John Threadcraft, a former army officer, and John Jefferson, an FBI agent.^[66] As Snyder testified that Siddiqui had been arrested with a handwritten note outlining plans to attack various U.S. sites, she disrupted the proceedings, saying: "If you were in a secret prison ... where children were tortured ... This is no list of targets against New York. I was never planning to bomb it. You're lying."^{[67][68][69][70]}

As result of her outbursts, Siddiqui was repeatedly removed from the court, but told by the judge that she could watch the proceedings on closed-circuit television in an adjacent holding cell, a proposal that she rejected. A request by the defense lawyers to declare a mistrial was turned down by the judge.^[71]

The defense counsel said that the jury would not see any forensic evidence that the rifle was fired in the interrogation room.^[72] It said it expected to show that there were very different versions of the story, and that her handbag contents were not credible as evidence because they were sloppily handled.^[73] FBI agent John Jefferson and Ahmed Gul, an army interpreter, recounted their alleged struggle with her in Ghazni. Judge Berman warned Siddiqui that no more outbursts would be tolerated, which she accepted: "I’m just going to be quiet, but it doesn’t mean I agree."^[74]

An FBI agent said that they did not find her fingerprints on the rifle. Author Glenn Sulmasy observed in the National Review that "Of course, in a combat theater, such 'fingerprinting' does not ordinarily occur.^[75] The testimony of Gul appeared, according to the defense, to differ from that given by Snyder with regard to whether Siddiqui was standing or on her knees as she fired the rifle.^[76] When Siddiqui testified, in addition to denying that she grabbed the rifle, though she admitted trying to escape, she said she had been tortured in secret prisons before her arrest by a “group of people pretending to be Americans doing bad things in America’s name.”^[77]

The trial lasted 14 days, and the jury deliberated for three days before reaching a verdict.^[2]

On February 3, 2010, she was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder, armed assault, using and carrying a firearm, and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees.^[2] She faces a minimum sentence of 30 years and a maximum of life in prison on the firearm charge, and could also get up to 20 years for each attempted murder and firearms charge and up to 8 years on each of the remaining assault counts.^[2][4][78] Sentence will be passed on May 6, 2010.^[79]

In Pakistan, a petition was filed seeking action against the Pakistani government for not approaching the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have Siddiqui released from the U.S. Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffree said the CIA had arrested Siddiqui in Karachi in 2003, and one of her sons was killed during her arrest. On January 21, 2010, he submitted documents allegedly proving the arrest to the Lahore High Court.^[80]

After her conviction, thousands of political and social activists and students in Pakistan protested.^[23] Echoing her family's comments, and anti-U.S. sentiment, many believe she was picked up in Karachi in 2003, detained at the U.S. Bagram Airbase and tortured, and that the charges against her were fabricated.^[81][23] U.S. officials flatly deny the assertions.^[23] Shireen Mazari, editor of the Pakistani right-wing Nation newspaper, wrote that the verdict "did not really surprise anyone familiar with the vindictive mindset of the U.S. public post-9/11".^[82]

According to the Pakistani newspaper The News International, the Taliban has threatened to execute U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl in retaliation for Siddiqui's conviction.^[83] They claim members of Siddiqui's family requested their help. A Taliban spokesman said:

We tried our best to make the family understand that our role may create more troubles for the hapless woman, who was already in trouble. On their persistent requests, we have now decided to include Dr Aafia Siddiqui's name in the list of our prisoners in US custody that we delivered to Americans in Afghanistan for swap of their soldier in our custody.^[84]

• Sealed Complaint, U.S. v. Siddiqui, July 31, 2008
• Indictment, U.S. v. Siddiqui, September 3, 2008
• FBI Seeking Information poster
• "Aafia Siddiqui Indicted" (press release). U.S. Department of Justice. September 2, 2008
• Order Finding Defendant Competent to Stand Trial, U.S. v. Siddiqui, July 29, 2009
• "Aafia Siddiqui Found Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court of Attempting to Murder U.S. Nationals in Afghanistan and Six Additional Charges" (press release). U.S. Department of Justice. February 3, 2010
• Official website of Siddiqui's family
• Draafia.org website