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US Admits Detaining 7 Year Old Child

By Alexa

This is Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. Dr. Siddiqui is a Pakistani national, physician, mother of three young children, one in US detention since 2003. She was kidnapped five years ago in Pakistan and is obviously a victim of horrendous torture at Bagram AFB.

Dr. Siddiqui before capture, arrest and five years "lost" as a ghost detainee.

Dr. Siddiqui charged in the U.S., August 2008

Although the facts about Dr. Siddiqui's lost years are difficult to piece together, the fact that her 11-year-old son, Ahmed, has been detained by the United States for the entirety of those five years has been confirmed.

Ahmed will turn 12 in November. He is apparently considered by the U.S. a potential witness in the prosecution of his mother. Think about that for a minute. A 7-year-old boy was detained and has been, all this time, illegally imprisoned,  whereabouts unknown to his family until this past Friday. His mother spent the same period of time at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan under torture.

Straightup madness, all of it. A group of Pakistani parliamentarians will travel to the US this week to press for her release and seek information about her other two children, one girl who may be now 9 years old and a 5-year-old son, who was just seven months when the family disappeared missing, according to relatives.

And of course, US officials had previously denied holding any of the three children.

Aafia Siddiqui was born in Karachi, Pakistan, on March 2, 1972. She was one of three children of Mohammad Siddiqui, a doctor trained in England, and Ismet.

Aafia moved to Texas in 1990 to be near her brother, and after spending a year at the University of Houston, transferred to MIT. Aafia then married Mohammed Amjad Khan, a medical student, and subsequently entered Brandeis University as a graduate student in cognitive neuroscience.

Citing the difficulty of living as Muslims in the United States after 9/11, Aafia and her husband returned to Pakistan. They stayed in Pakistan for a short time, and then returned to the United States. They remained there until 2002, and then moved back to Pakistan.

Some problems developed in their marriage, and Aafia was eight months pregnant with their third child when she and Khan were estranged. She and the children stayed at her mother's house, while Khan lived elsewhere in Karachi.

After giving birth to her son, Aafia stayed at her mother's house for the rest of the year, returning to the US without her children around December 2002 to look for a job in the Baltimore area, where her sister had begun working at Sinai Hospital.

Soon after Pakistani authorities arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Aafia and her children disappeared. A report in the Pakistani Urdu press said that Aafiai and her kids had been seen being picked up by Pakistani authorities and taken into custody.

According to Mrs. Siddiqui, Aafia left her mother's house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal in a Metro-cab on March 30, to catch a flight for Rawalpindi, but never reached the airport. Inside sources claim that Afia had been "picked-up" by intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggest she was handed over to the FBI.

In March 2003, Siddiqui and her children dropped out of sight, shortly after 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed mentioned her name during an interrogation. KSM later claimed he had named some innocent people just to please his captors, and Siddiqui's lawyers believe he gave up her name under torture.

In 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly identified her as being among seven suspected al-Qaida operatives the FBI wanted to find.

Aafia Siddiqui had been missing for more than a year when the FBI put her photographs on its website.  The press was told that she was an Al Qaeda facilitator.

The family's attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, says the allegation was a blessing in disguise because it places Siddiqui somewhere at a specific time. She says she can prove Siddiqui was in Boston that week.

In Pakistan, there has been no official report registered with the police regarding her disappearance, and the police are doing nothing to trace her. Mrs. Siddiqui alleges that an intelligence agency official came to her house a week after the incident, and warned her not to make an issue out of her daughter's disappearance and threatened her with dire consequences.

Michael G. Garcia, the US attorney general of southern region, in his letter addressed to Dr Aafia's sister Dr Fozia Siddiqui, has revealed that Dr. Aafia's son was in the FBI's custody.

Dr. Fozia had demanded of the US authorities to release her nephew and sent him to his uncle Muhammad Ali Siddiqui who is residing in the US. On the other hand, a website has also released a video of the boy on internet in which he is being interrogated by the FBI.

Children below the age of 12 years cannot be detained as per provision of international law.

"We are expecting him to appear before the court after two months," Sharp said. The attorney representing Dr Aafia in the US court, had also confirmed that Dr Aafia's elder son was in the confinement of the US authorities.

She further maintained that the authorities were hesitant to present him before the court as under all the international laws, children below 12 could not be detained.

So here we have it. A woman who was kidnapped five years ago in Pakistan and released into US custody three weeks ago, unable to walk after her years of torture at Bagram AFB.

An 11-year-old child in US detention for the same span of years, being held as a tool to coerce his mother to talk, since it's clearly illegal for him to have been in detention since age 7, and it's also patently illegal to present him in court as a witness.

Sharp revealed that there were solid evidences of Ahmed's detention, which might cause international embarrassment to the US government.

There is so much wrong here, I'm not sure where to start. But where are the two younger children, a 5 year old boy and a daughter who was 7 months old when she was disappeared?

More info at Cage Prisoners. Not nearly enough.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on August 25, 2008 (boomark / email).