Sunday, March 13, 2016

Mobilization for Sister Aafia Siddiqui

Brother Mauri Saalakhan has informed New Trend that there are mobilizations planned for March 2016, to bring public attention to the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui in Boston, New York, DC, and Fort Worth, Texas. Please urge everyone to invite the entire community to participate.

Sister Aafia in many ways is like the patron saint of the Islamic Movement, even though she did not choose that role. "If the US isn't doing anything about it, if the Pakistanis don't do anything about it, people like Daesh (the Islamic State) will exploit the case," her sister told the Pakistan Tribune. Aafia was a very vibrant and enthusiastic student activist at MIT and Brandeis, who was obsessed with helping other Muslims. She organized a campaign to collect winter boots for Bosnia. The winter boots campaign was initiated by Benevolence International Foundation, whose founder Enaam Ernaout is currently facing loss of citizenship after serving 8 years in prison after the charity was targeted by Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft in the Bush years.

This woman is very close to my heart because at the time, I too was collecting winter boots for Bosnia. I was going door to door asking for donations of boots and winter clothing. My local mosques were stacked to the ceiling with donations, which we then trucked over to Chicago.

I believe Sister Aafia was targeted by the Zionists for all kinds of wild accusations because she appeared in the Boston Globe, speaking for her Islamic Students' Association, saying: "Islam is such a beautiful religion that if Americans learned about it, they would all want to become Muslims." The Jews twisted her into someone who was trying to impose Shariah on America.

Is it a coincidence that a short time later, she and her children were abducted from a taxi in Pakistan in 2003? They just disappeared. Aafia was then imprisoned at Bagram, a US run prison, where she was raped and brutalized.

Nobody knew anything about her whereabouts until the day there was a Taliban attack on Bagram Prison. A suicide bomber exploded the entranceway of the prison, killing security guards. Hundreds of prisoners were released back into their community. They were all telling the same story. There is a woman prisoner among the men, and they could hear her constantly wailing for her children, who had been taken from her by the soldiers. The baby is presumed dead. It was extremely emotionally disturbing to listen to, even for these hardened men.

A British official, Lord Nazir Ahmed was alerted as to the situation by his constituents. I ran into him visiting a mosque in the Boston area and talked to him about it. After the UK inquiry as to the identity of this woman, a few days later Aafia was said to be "found wandering around Afghanistan" totally disoriented, then re-arrested by the United States.

"She was dropped off in Ghazni (Afghanistan) and reunited with her son in 2008, near the governor's compound; later taken back into custody and shot by an American soldier while awaiting re-interrogation," Mauri Saalakhan explained.

An eyewitness said that Aafia, when she saw the US soldiers, thought that they were here to save her. So she started walking towards them. However, she was shot in the stomach. In order to clean up their story, the US Army claims that she attacked the soldier. She was sentenced to 86 years in prison for the crime of being shot by a US soldier. They left the bullet inside her for months. Then, when she finally got surgery, it never properly healed. She went from being the prettiest girl in the world to a bent over old lady in a very short span of time.

Now, nobody even knows if she is alive or dead. She is imprisoned at Federal Medical Center Carswell, the same place where environmental activist Marie Mason and Attorney Lynne Stewart were held before her release, praise God.

"When Aafia left, couple of hours or so later, there was a knock at the door. My mom walked to the gate and asked 'who is it?'" Fowzia Siddiqui, Aafia's sister told AFP.

"He... said something like: 'If you say anything or report this to the police, you will have four dead bodies'."

Fowzia Siddiqui is a medical doctor. She has not been granted permission to visit with her sister or even to speak with her on the phone. This is very unusual prison treatment for an incarcerated person in the United States. We need to step in.

The Jericho Movement is also trying to get an independent doctor to determine the health status of various political prisoners. The system so far is preventing it. As prisoners age and experience decades of incarceration, it is vital that we are able to send our own doctors in to check on them.

http://newtrendmag.org/ntma1634.htm

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