by Yvonne Ridley, Dissident Voice, February 9th, 2010
Many of us are still in a state of shock over the guilty verdict returned on Dr Aafia Siddiqui.
The response from the people of Pakistan was predictable and overwhelming and I salute their spontaneous actions.
From Peshawar to Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and beyond they marched in their thousands demanding the return of Aafia.
Even some of the US media expressed discomfort over the verdict returned by the jurors … there was a general feeling that something was not right.
Everyone had something to say, everyone that is except the usually verbose US Ambassador Anne Patterson who has spent the last two years briefing against Dr Aafia and her supporters.
This is the same woman who claimed I was a fantasist when I gave a press conference with Tehreek e Insaf leader Imran Khan back in July 2008 revealing the plight of a female prisoner in Bagram called the Grey Lady.
She said I was talking nonsense and stated categorically that the prisoner I referred to as “650” did not exist.
By the end of the month she changed her story and said there had been a female prisoner but that she was most definitely not Dr Aafia Siddiqui.
By that time Aafia had been gunned down at virtually point blank range in an Afghan prison cell jammed full of more than a dozen US soldiers, FBI agents and Afghan police.
Her Excellency briefed the media that the prisoner had wrested an M4 gun from one soldier and fired off two rounds and had to be subdued. The fact these bullets failed to hit a single person in the cell and simply disappeared did not resonate with the diplomat.
In a letter dripping in untruths on August 16 2008 she decried the “erroneous and irresponsible media reports regarding the arrest of Ms
Aafia Siddiqui”. She went on to say: “Unfortunately,
there are some who have an interest in simply distorting the facts in an effort to manipulate and inflame public opinion. The truth is never served by sensationalism…”
When Jamaat Islami invited me on a national tour of Pakistan to address people about the continued abuse of Dr Aafia and the truth about her incarceration in Bagram, the US Ambassador continued to issue rebuttals.
She assured us all that Dr Aafia was being treated humanely had been given consular access as set out in international law … hmm. Well I have a challenge for Ms Patterson today. I challenge her to repeat every single word she said back then and swear it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
As Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s trial got underway, the US Ambassador and some of her stooges from the intelligence world laid on a lavish party at the US Embassy in Islamabad for some hand-picked journalists where I’ve no doubt in between the dancing, drinks and music they were carefully briefed about the so-called facts of the case.
Interesting that some of the potentially incriminating pictures taken at the private party managed to find the Ambassador was probably hoping to minimize the impact the trial would have on the streets of Pakistan proving that, for the years she has been holed up and barricaded behind concrete bunkers and barbed wire, she has learned nothing about this great country of Pakistan or its people.
One astute Pakistani columnist wrote about her: “The respected lady seems to have forgotten the words of her own country’s 16th president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): “You
can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some
of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”.
And the people of Pakistan proved they are nobody’s fool and responded to the guilty verdict in New York in an appropriate way.
When injustice is the law it is the duty of everyone to rise up and challenge that injustice in any way possible.
The response – so far – has been restrained and measured but it is just the start. A sentence has yet to be delivered by Judge Richard Berman in May.
Of course there has been a great deal of finger pointing and blame towards the jury in New York who found Dr Aafia guilty of attempted murder.
Observers asked how they could ignore the science and the irrefutable facts … there was absolutely no evidence linking Dr Aafia to the gun, no bullets, no residue from firing it.
But I really don’t think we can blame the jurors for the verdict – you see the jury simply could not handle the truth. Had they taken the logical route and gone for the science and the hard, cold, clinical facts it would have meant two things. It would have meant around eight US soldiers took the oath and lied in court to save their own skins and careers or it would have meant that Dr Aafia Siddiqui was telling the truth.
And, as I said before, the jury couldn’t handle the truth. Because that would have meant that the defendant really had been kidnapped, abused, tortured and held in dark, secret prisons by the US before being shot and put on a rendition flight to New York. It would have meant that her three children – two of them US citizens – would also have been kidnapped, abused and tortured by the US.
They say ignorance is bliss and this jury so desperately wanted not to believe that the US could have had a hand in the kidnapping of a five-month -old baby boy, a five-year-old girl and her seven-year-old brother.
They couldn’t handle the truth … it is as simple as that.
Well I, and many others across the world like me, can’t handle any more lies. America’s reputation is lying in the lowest gutters in Pakistan at the moment and it can’t sink any lower.
The trust has gone, there is only a burning hatred and resentment towards a superpower which sends unmanned drones into villages to slaughter innocents.
It is fair to say that America’s goodwill and credibility is all but washed up with most honest, decent citizens of Pakistan.
And I think even Her Excellency Anne Patterson recognizes that fact which is why she is now keeping her mouth shut.
If she has any integrity and any self respect left she should stand before the Pakistan people and ask for their forgiveness for the drone murders, the extra judicial killings, the black operations, the kidnapping, torture and rendition of its citizens, the water-boarding, the bribery, the corruption and, not least of all, the injustice handed out to Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her family.
She should then pick up the phone to the US President and tell him to release Aafia and return Pakistan’s most loved, respected and famous daughter and reunite her with the two children who are still missing.
Then she should re-read her letter of August 16, 2008 and write another … one of resignation.
Yvonne Ridley is a patron of Cageprisoners which first brought the plight of Dr Aafia Siddiqui to the world’s attention shortly after her kidnap in March 2003. The award-winning, investigative journalist also co-produced the documentary In Search of Prisoner 650 with film-maker Hassan al Banna Ghani which concluded that the Grey Lady of Bagram was Dr Aafia Siddiqui. Read other articles by Yvonne.
Peace and Justice Post 
Secret British files reveal US torture of detainee
February 11, 2010Britain fought for months to block the release of the information
White House ‘deeply disappointed’ by British court ruling, says could affect future ‘cooperation’.
By Guy Jackson – LONDON
A former Guantanamo Bay inmate was shackled and warned he would “disappear” if he refused to cooperate with US interrogators, Britain revealed Wednesday after losing a lengthy court battle.
The British government sought to downplay suggestions that the publication of the previously secret information concerning the treatment of Binyam Mohamed would damage its intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States.
But the White House said it was “extremely disappointed” by the decision of the court and warned it could affect future US-British cooperation on intelligence.
The seven-paragraph summary was published after Foreign Secretary David Miliband lost his appeal court bid to prevent senior judges from disclosing it.
Britain fought for months to block the release of the information, arguing that doing so would undermine the US’ willingness to share sensitive information with Britain.
But High Court judges ruled there was “overwhelming” public interest in publishing the material and that the risk to national security was “not a serious one”.
The judges said the content of the summary, which describes Mohamed’s treatment as “cruel, inhuman and degrading”, was already in the public domain following a decision in December by a US court in another case.
The redacted information concerns what the CIA told British intelligence officials about “interviews” with Mohamed in Pakistan in 2002, two years before he was taken to Guantanamo.
The summary released by the court said that “at some stage during that further interview process by the United States authorities, BM had been intentionally subjected to continuous sleep deprivation.”
“It was reported that combined with the sleep deprivation, threats and inducements were made to him. His fears of being removed from United States custody and ‘disappearing’ were played upon,” it said.
The summary adds: “It was reported that the stress brought about by these deliberate tactics was increased by him being shackled in his interviews.”
Miliband said however that Britain had “no information” to corroborate Mohamed’s allegations that he had also been subjected to genital mutilation.
He also disclosed that police were investigating allegations of criminal actions by a British official linked to the case.
Ethiopian-born Mohamed, 31, had come to Britain in 1994 seeking asylum.
He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 while trying to return to Britain and spent nearly seven years in US custody or in countries taking part in the US-run rendition programme of terror suspects.
He claims that in Morocco in 2002 he was questioned using information which could only have come from the British intelligence service.
After a lengthy campaign by his supporters, he became the first prisoner to be released from Guantanamo under President Barack Obama and returned to Britain in February last year.
Miliband said he accepted the court’s judgement, but insisted that Britain’s intelligence-sharing relationship with the US had been at stake in the legal battle, not the content of the summary.
The minister told lawmakers he had spoken to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, and Britain would work with US officials to study the implications of the ruling “in the light of our shared goals and commitments.”
The White House criticised the judgment saying the information had been shared “in confidence and with certain expectations.”
“As we warned, the court’s judgment will complicate the confidentiality of our intelligence-sharing relationship with the UK, and it will have to factor into our decision-making going forward,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for President Barack Obama.
The director of Reprieve, the campaign group which has championed Mohamed’s case, accused the government of going to “enormous lengths” to prevent the disclosure of “this tiny fraction” of Binyam’s story.
“They still refuse to admit that he was abused,” said Clive Stafford Smith, adding that the newly released details “are only the tip of the iceberg.”
Share this:
Tags: Binyam Mohamed, British govt, Guantanamo detainee, Guy Jackson, High Court ruling, US interrogators
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, torture, Uncategorized, US policy | Leave a Comment »