Bagram’s child prisoners?
President Obama urgently needs to respond to recent developments in Pakistan relating to the missing children of jailed Pakistani national, Dr. Aafia Siddiqi, specifically, we need to know what US records reveal about the whereabouts of Dr. Aafia Siddiqi and her children between 2003 and 2008?
A week ago unidentified men on Sunday brought a 12-year-old girl to the home Dr. Fauzia Siddiqi in Karachi claiming that she is Maryam Khan the daughter of Dr. Aafia Siddiqi.
Aafia Siddiqui’s lawyers maintain that she was abducted by the Pakistani and US agents along with her three children in 2003 and rendered to Afghanistan where she was detained by American forces for over five years. Siddiqui claims she was abused, raped and tortured throughout her detention.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on yesterday that a DNA test has now positively proved that Maryam Khan Dr. Fauzia Siddiqi in Karachi is the biological daughter of Aafia Siddiqui’s former husband, Dr Amjad Khan.
Talking to reporters after meeting Dr Aafia’s sister Dr Fauzia, Rehman Malik said Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani who is already on a US visit will hold negotiations for the repatriation Aafia Siddiqui to Pakistan. Aafia Siddiqui was convicted by a US court in February of firing on US soldiers while in their custody in Afghanistan.
A report by Pakistan’s National Forensic Science Agency’s states that “The DNA profile obtained from blood samples of Maryam Khan alias Fatima, Ahmad Muhammad, her brother, share the STR Genetic Markers with the DNA profile obtained from blood sample of Dr Amjad Khan. Based on the DNA analysis, Dr Amjad cannot be excluded as the biological father of Maryam alias Fatima.”
Senator Talha Mehmood Chairman of Pakistan’s Senate Standing Committee on Interior informed press yesterday that Maryam who calls herself ‘Fatima’ and speaks only English and Farsi was recovered from the Bagram airbase where she was found with an American only as ‘John’,
Senator Talha Mahmood said that Maryam, four years old at the time of her abduction, was held in a ‘cold, dark room’ in Bagram for the past seven years, he called upon Pakistan’s Prime Minister Gilani to take up Dr Aafia’s issue when he meets the US President Obama to secure her release and bring back to Pakistan.
Maryam Hassan founder of the Justice for Aafia Coalition recently commented “After years of repeated denials, claiming ignorance of the whereabouts of Aafia Siddiqui and her children, the US Government’s lies are finally unravelling, yet many troubling questions remain unanswered.
Whilst overjoyed that Maryam has finally been released and reunited with Aafia’s family – and we pray that their independent verification of her identity confirms that of the government’s - we must still ask what has become of Aafia’s youngest child, Suleman, only six months old at the time of his abduction? For years there have been distressing rumours that Suleman had been killed in US custody and reports that Aafia was shown photos of the baby lying in a pool of blood. His welfare needs to be immediately disclosed.
That the media and international bodies can remain deafeningly silent when confronted with the case of a four year old child separated from her parents and held in inhumane conditions for seven years at the detention facility in Bagram, notorious for the torture and murder of detainees, is both outrageous and appalling. Seven years too many have passed and an independent inquiry into the circumstances of their disappearance, detention and alleged torture is long overdue and now a matter of urgency. Those responsible must be held to account.”
Information about the case of Aafia Siddiqui and her children available here.