By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: As President Joe Biden prepares to leave office, a Pakistani neuroscientist imprisoned in the United States for nearly 15 years is making a desperate bid for freedom, claiming she was wrongfully convicted and harshly treated, her lawyer said.
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a 52-year-old mother of three, was convicted in 2010 of attempting to kill American servicemen and F.B.I. agents in Afghanistan. Her lawyers have long maintained that she was wrongly accused and that her conviction was based on flawed intelligence and witness testimonies.
Siddiqui has become a cause célèbre in Pakistan, where many view her as a victim of American injustice. Her case has sparked widespread outrage and condemnation, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif personally intervening to appeal for her release.
Siddiqui, a US-trained neuroscientist, was convicted in 2010 on multiple charges, including attempting to kill US nationals. She became a suspect after leaving the US and marrying a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, local media reported.
Siddiqui was wounded during a confrontation with US officials in Afghanistan in 2008, with some reports suggesting she shot at the Americans. She was sentenced to 86 years in prison in 2010.
In a 76,500-word dossier submitted to the White House, Siddiqui’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, argues that his client’s imprisonment is a miscarriage of justice. Smith claims that American intelligence agencies mistakenly believed Siddiqui was a nuclear physicist working on a radioactive bomb, when in fact she held a Ph.D. in education.
Her lawyer said she was visiting Pakistan in 2003 when she was abducted with her three children by Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency and handed to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which took her to Afghanistan.
With President Biden set to leave office on Monday, Dr. Siddiqui’s lawyers are racing against the clock to secure her release. “We just pray and keep our fingers crossed and I hope to goodness our clemency is granted Monday morning,” Smith said in an interview to Arab News. “And if not, revert to plan B and plan C and plan D until we get her out of this awful place.”
“She’s no more of a terrorist than I am,” Smith said, emphasizing his client’s innocence.
Prime Minister Sharif has written to Biden in 2024, calling for Siddiqui’s release and expressing concerns about her treatment while incarcerated.
“In fact, they [Pakistani officials] even fear that she could take her own life,” Sharif wrote. President Biden has until Monday to grant clemency before leaving office.
The case has raised questions about the treatment of Muslim prisoners in the American justice system and the use of secret evidence in terrorism trials. Siddiqui’s supporters argue that her imprisonment is a stark example of the dangers of Islamophobia.
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