by B. R. GOWANI
Religious leaders have drawn thousands of people on to the streets to demand the release of Aafia Siddiqui, right, as the price for freeing Raymond Davis, left. AP/Telegraph
Raymond Davis
The United States elite simply refuse to modify its gringo mentality. The Middle East is on the edge of explosion and Pakistan has been on the brink for a long time. The government in Pakistan is weak and power is in the streets controlled by the Islamic militants.
In these delicate times, a hot-headed US consular employee–actually a spy, Raymond Davis, killed two motorcyclists, Faizan Haider and Faheem Shamshad, possibly ISI agents, on January 27, in broad daylight in Lahore’s busy Mozang Chowrangi area. He claimed that he was being followed by those locals and he murdered them in self defense. Two pistols belonging to the deceased were found from the scene of the crime. A consulate SUV rushing to help Davis killed a pedestrian and the driver has not been arrested yet.
On February 7, Shamshad’s widow, Shumaila Kanwal, feeling that her family can’t get justice from the big people, committed suicide.
(The government should investigate whether it was a suicide out of genuine feelings of helplessness or was she forced into it, because there are so many involved and uninvolved elements that have their own interests and agendas linked with this whole episode.)
And what does the US government do? It arrogantly demands a diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention for Davis. The entire situation has now spun out of control.
How could this have been handled diplomatically? Without wasting any time, the US State Department (now fumbling), should have asked the US ambassador to Pakistan to meet the families of the deceased, express deep regret for the losses of lives, and should have paid the blood money, and settled the matter amicably.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry was in Pakistan on Tuesday. But it was too late. He said if Davis is deported then he’ll be tried in the US. He further added: “We respect your courts, but everyone should respect the international laws.” The country which has broken the most international laws and has been most disrespectful of international and other countries’ courts is the US. The Pakistani government is, of course, trying its best to get Davis out of Pakistan.
Aafia Siddiqui
Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel
In 2003, a US educated neuroscientist Dr. Aafia Siddique and her three children (two of them US citizens) disappeared in Pakistan. It was suspected that the Pakistani ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) was behind the disappearance but it had denied the charges. The US government had accused Siddique of working for the Al Qaeda and she was on the FBI wanted list. In July 2008, she reappeared in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and was allegedly carrying in her handbag, chemicals, instructions for making biological weapons, and plans for terrorist attacks which would cause casualties on a large scale in the US. The US soldiers claimed that, in a police station in Ghazni, a shooting incident occurred where she tried to kill US soldiers but got wounded when the soldiers fired back. None of the soldiers were injured. She was then transported to the US where in September 2010 the court in New York sentenced her to a prison term of 86 years on charges of attempted murder. Al Qaeda or terrorism was not the focus of the trial. She wants to appeal the sentence.
The suspicion about the ISI role in Siddiqui family’s disappearance was true. The International Justice Network, one of whose lawyers is representing Siddiqui, received an audio tape of a conversation among Imran Shaukat, the Superintendent of Police for Sindh province, and other people.
Here is what Shaukat says:
“I am stationed in Karachi. I head the counter terrorism department for Sindh province.”
Here is a discussion about Aafia Siddiqui:
Imran Shoukat: “Yes, I arrested her [Aafia Siddique]. She wore glasses and a veil….. When she was caught she was travelling to Islamabad….She was hobnobbing with clerics. …..
Unidentified Voice1: “So what happened after the arrest. Did ISI ask for her custody?”
Imran Shoukat: “Yes, we gave her to ISI”
UVI: “ISI or something else?”
Imran Shoukat: “ISI, so we gave her to them.”
Here is a discussion about Siddique’s daughter Maryam:
Unidentified Voice 1: Oh, another thing. They found her daughter yesterday.
Imran Shoukat: She’s home already.
UV1: Yes, she’s home. She speaks English only. She was in the prison. She is seven or eight years old. And she only speaks English.
UV2: Eight years old?
UV1: Yeah. Children were in prison and they spoke to them in American English.
UV2: Is she home?
UV1: Yeah. They got her home.
The tapes are four hours long and are in Hindi/Urdu, English, and Punjabi.
Maryam’s older siblings (born in 1996 and 1998) were kept in separate prisons. Her younger brother Suleman, who was six months old, died, probably around the time of disappearance.
Amina Masood Janjua at Defence for Human Rights says 500 people have disappeared as part of the “war on terror.”
About Siddiqui’s role, an investigative reporter Victoria Brittain wonders: “In this John Le Carre world of ruthless manipulation of the vulnerable it is impossible to know how, or whether, she could have been used in counter terrorism’s goal at the time of finding Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.” Read her entire article, “Siddiqui’s case,” to understand Siddique’s plight.
Exchanging Raymond for Siddique
Last Sunday, Pakistan’s Federal Law Minister Babar Awan said: “We will demand the release of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui if America demands the release of Raymond Davis.”
This is an absurd idea. Raymond has killed two persons, whereas Siddiqui has not killed anyone.
According to WikiLeaks cables, the Pakistani government had asked for Siddiqui’s release in November 2008. It should ask again for an unconditional release of Siddiqui.
One can understand the pressure the Pakistani government is under right now and is looking for a way out. What it should do is to demand from the US government the release of Aafia Siddiqui first. Then it should demand the release of the innocent prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay in exchange for freeing Davis.
Now this will be a fair exchange.
Note: But a similar request by the International Justice Network for an exchange is understandable because it lacks the power that a government can exert to get the work done.
The compensation
Once she is released, Siddiqui should sue the US government, CIA, FBI, and all the other departments and agencies who took away eight years of her and her chidrens’ life and for the torture and other suffering she went through. She should also sue the ISI, Pakistan’s criminal agency.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com