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Rhetoric
and violence against innocent Muslims has reached hysterical levels.
This scapegoating becomes a necessity for the ruling class as support
declines for the endless U.S. wars in the Middle East and South Asia.
To
justify the “war on terror,” both the Bush and Obama administrations
have relied on phony show-trials. Innocent Muslims like the Fort Dix
Five have been followed by infiltrators and convicted of terrorism with
no material evidence. The case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is especially
egregious.
Aafia
Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist who studied in the U.S. before earning her
doctorate from Brandeis. At MIT she became active in the Muslim Student
Association. The political climate following Sept. 11 prompted her to
move with her family back to Pakistan. But when she and her
husband divorced, she began looking for work in the U.S. again.
Dr.
Siddiqui and her children’s whereabouts were unknown between March 2003
and July 2008. The U.S. government insists that she was in hiding, but
former prisoners at Bagram, Afghanistan, have stated that she was the
“Grey Lady of Bagram,” the sole female inmate whose nightly cries of
pain inspired a hunger strike in her defense. Binyam Mohamed, an
innocent Ethiopian man who spent seven years of detention and torture
at the hands of the U.S., indentified Dr. Siddiqui
as the mysterious woman, “prisoner 650,” he saw while being held in
Bagram.
Aafia’s
oldest son claims that in March of 2003, some 15-20 people, including a
“white lady,” kidnapped his mother and two siblings while they were
traveling via taxi to an airport in Pakistan.
In
2008, Dr. Siddiqui was found on the streets of Ghazni, Afghanistan, and arrested by Afghani
forces. According to the U.S. government, she was
captured while carrying instructions on building explosives, chemical
weapons, and weapons “involving biological material and radiological
agents.” She was also supposedly carrying bottles of chemicals and
handwritten notes listing “mass casualty” targets in the U.S.
Despite
these allegations, Dr. Siddiqui is not facing a single terrorism
charge. Instead, the U.S. brought Dr. Siddiqui to New York City, charged with attempted murder.
Their prosecution alleged that, while detained, she grabbed a soldier’s
M4 rifle and began indiscriminate shooting at close range.
Her
own story is quite different. She states that she was in the detention
facility in Ghazni, heard the Afghans speaking to Americans, and peered
through a curtain. A startled soldier announced that she was loose. She
was shot twice and required a blood transfusion.
There
was no forensic evidence to prove that she shot the gun—no
fingerprints, casings on the floor, bullet holes in the walls, or
injuries. The only casings found were from the revolver used to shoot
her. Eyewitness stories contradict each other. Siddiqui refused to
cooperate in the trial, insisting it was biased against her.
The
peace and justice movement must stand with Dr. Siddiqui and all the
victims of the show-trials. A rally is planned for the courthouse
during her sentencing hearing: Sept. 23, 8:45 a.m., at 500 Pearl St., Manhattan.
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