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A New York court has accused the Pakistani-born neuroscientist with attempted murder of US officers in Afghanistan. |
CAIRO — The sudden appearance and trial of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani mother and US-educated neuroscientist who vanished five years ago, is reviving debate about the fate of hundreds of Pakistanis missing for years on suspicion of terror links.
"One hopes that this case is going to bring more attention to the issue of the 'disappeared,' " Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, August 6.
An American court in New York on Tuesday, August 5, charged the Pakistani-born neuroscientist with attempted murder of US officers in Afghanistan.
According to the prosecution's complaint sheet, Siddiqui was first detained by Afghan police on July 17 in possession of bomb-making instructions and suspicious liquids.
While undergoing questioning the next day she allegedly seized a US army M-4 rifle and attacked a group of US servicemen, including two FBI agents, two US army officers, and army interpreters.
Allegedly she missed and was shot in return fire by a serviceman.
Suffering from a bullet wound sustained during the alleged assault, the 36-year-old woman had to be helped into the courtroom to face the charges.
A petite and frail figure wrapped in a maroon scarf, Siddiqui shook her head in apparent bewilderment as the judge read out the criminal complaint.
Defense lawyers They insist Siddiqui, an honors graduate from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was physically incapable of assaulting officers at an Afghan police station as alleged.
They say she has for the past five years been held captive -- possibly in a secret US or allied prison -- and that attempted murder charges invented as a pretext to bring her to US territory.
On graduating from MIT in the 1990s, she took a doctorate in neuro-cognitive science, not microbiology or genetics as often misreported, at Brandeis University, near Boston.
She returned to Pakistan in late 2002 after divorcing her husband, who was briefly detained and questioned by the FBI in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Siddiqui, along with her three young children, dropped out of sight in 2003 in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.
Missing
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| Activists believe Siddiqui was "disappeared" by Pakistani authorities at US behest. (Reuters) |
Some human rights activists believe that Siddiqui was originally "disappeared" by Pakistani authorities five years ago, possibly at US behest, said the Los Angeles Times.
The case will likely put pressures on the Islamabad government to account for the whereabouts of hundred of Pakistanis who have been missing since 9/11 on suspicion of having links to Al-Qaeda and Taliban.
Intelligence and independent sources estimate the number of missing Pakistanis at more than 700.
Most of the missing are presumed to be detainees held incommunicado by the military or security agencies such as the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence.
Many families have taken their cases to the courts, which have issued strict orders to the interior ministry to inform the judiciary of their whereabouts.
The ministry and the intelligence have, in some cases, remained reluctant to provide details and, in others, denied outright that the missing people in their custody.
According to the constitution, civil courts, including the Supreme Court, cannot try any case against armed forces, which are being blamed for holding the missing people.
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