Petition for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

We, the undersigned, petition:

Donald J. Trump

Greg Abbott

Department of Justice

William Barr (Attorney General of the United States)

Eric S. Dreiband (Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights Division, DOJ)

Ken Paxton (Attorney General of Texas)

Michael Carvajal (Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons)

Kathleen Hawk Sawyer (Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons)

Release or Home Confinement for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui from Coronavirus-Infected Prison

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, is serving an 86-year term at FMC Carswell. Carswell is a prison-cum-medical facility for female prisoners. Other than Seagoville Prison, which is also located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has 1,359 cases, Carswell has the largest COVID-19 outbreak of any U.S. prison. According to Bureau of Prisons own website, the number of reported cases there is 542. (Other sources place it even higher, at 571.) Carswell’s inmate population totals 1,357. That makes the current infection rate at the facility 40%. Three female prisoners, Andrea Circle Bear, Sandra Kincaid, and Teresa Ely, have died from the virus at the facility. Of these dead women, Circle Bear, a 34-year old Native American, was much younger than Dr. Siddiqui. So, the risk to Dr. Siddiqui is clearly grave.

According to the Appeal, a project of the Justice Collaborative, "There's no air conditioning; incarcerated women are confined to their cells; the commissary is closed indefinitely, so women are running out of basic hygiene products like soap and shampoo; the warden was nowhere to be found; women weren't getting necessary medical care; inedible meals arrived in brown sacks." The facility is also sorely lacking in cleaning supplies and PPE.

(Much of the information on conditions at Carswell originates with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a local news outlet in the area, with no political agenda. The paper has been reporting on the situation there since April. The reports were later picked up by the local NBC affiliate, Time Magazine, and Newsweek.)

The bottom line is that Dr. Siddiqui, an MIT and Brandeis graduate, with no prior record of violence, and who was likely turned in by a vindicative, abusive ex-husband, has a greater than 40% chance of contracting Coronavirus while in U.S. custody. She is already in very poor physical, as well as mental health, having been denied timely medical treatment from a gunshot wound when she was captured in Afghanistan. The torture she endured while in captivity in Pakistan and Afghanistan exacerbated her physical condition. The death of her baby, Sulaiman, in the course of her arrest, and the imprisonment of her other two children, Ahmad and Mariam, along with her (they were each separately released years later), added to her grave mental trauma. 

Not one person was killed or injured in connection with the charges for which Dr. Siddiqui was convicted. And she was convicted in New York District Court, on the basis of ambiguous and highly contradictory testimony, due largely to the climate of fear and Islamophobia which existed at the time. Upon her conviction, she called for her supporters to stay calm, and to refrain from violence. She has continued to maintain her innocence throughout her 17-years of captivity.

Her sister, Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui, a Pakistan-based physician who holds a degree from Harvard University, has long spearheaded a national campaign in Pakistan, calling for her release. In Pakistan, the broad masses of people believe Dr. Siddiqui to be innocent, and the prevailing view is one of disbelief that the U.S., which touts itself as a supporter of women's rights, has accorded torture, solitary confinement, and now (the prospect of) COVID-19 to this Pakistani woman neuroscientist.

Supporters from the Aafia Foundation and other groups hold annual rallies outside FMC Carswell calling for her release. Human rights advocates in London, Durban, New York, Boston, and other cities worldwide regularly march calling for Dr. Siddiqui's release.

Countries like China and Russia are often associated with the jailing of scientists. The U.S. need not join their ranks. Dr. Siddiqui's release on humanitarian grounds from a COVID-infected prison would open the door to improved U.S.-Pakistan relations.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, is neither a threat to public welfare, nor a flight risk. She has suffered enough. We ask that she be released to home confinement with supporters in Maryland; or, that she be repatriated to Pakistan, where her elderly mother and her children have long awaited her. As COVID-19 ravages Texas prisons, particularly Carswell, Dr. Siddiqui’s life may depend upon it.

Sign the petition here.

Maintaining the Silence on Aafia

What do the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and (the Pakistani daily) Dawn have in common? They all maintain the silence on the unjust imprisonment of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. As such, they are abdicating their responsibility as media organs to seek truth in this case of gross human rights violations of an innocent Muslim woman scientist.

My letter to the Washington Post on Aafia (after running the 2018 DC Rock ‘N Roll Marathon in her name; letter is as yet unpublished by the Post):

https://siddiqun.blogspot.com/2018/03/her-too-assault-and-rape-in-case-of-dr.html

My letter to the Boston Globe on Aafia (after running the 2017 Boston Marathon in her name; letter remains unpublished by the Globe):

https://siddiqun.blogspot.com/2017/04/running-boston-marathon-for-pakistani.html

My letter to (Pakistani daily) Dawn on Aafia (after running the 2016 DC Rock ‘N Roll Marathon to call attention to Aafia’s case; letter was not published by Dawn):

http://siddiqun.blogspot.com/2016/03/letter-to-dawn-pakistani-daily.html

It is particularly shameful that Pakistani and other Muslim media refuse to openly and honestly discuss her case, or take any step which would compel Pakistani lawmakers to intercede on Aafia’s behalf. Inshallah, they will be held to account on the Last Day.

--Nadrat Siddique

We Did it for Aafia

By Nadrat Siddique

Training for a marathon (26.2 mile race) is a months-long process, very different from casual running for fitness.

In the lengthy preparation for a marathon, many things can happen to derail one’s training:  With 8 weeks left before the 2017 Boston Marathon (held in April), I developed a looming shin splint. I addressed it immediately, switching over to walking and low impact workouts at the gym for about three weeks.

Then, with 7 weeks left before Boston, I woke up one morning with shingles (I had chicken pox as a child). This lasted about two weeks.

Then, about 5 weeks before the marathon, my 26-year old stepbrother passed away. His sudden and tragic death deeply affected the family, and for me, brought back many memories of the death of my child, Hanzela, who died a SIDS death in his second month. At that point, I decided I really did not feel up to running Boston, either mentally or physically.

A week passed, then two, and I saw the mother of my dead stepbrother (my stepmum) heroically carrying on the motions of life, despite the passing of her beloved son, and I toyed again with the idea of running the illustrious marathon.

At this point, I’d run 31 prior marathons, and qualified for Boston many times. At the risk of sounding cocky, I had little to prove! The original—really the only—reason I’d wanted to run the race was to bring attention to the plight of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist nabbed in a joint U.S./Pakistani operation in Pakistan, raped and tortured by her captors, and ultimately sentenced to 86-years by a kangaroo court for a crime she clearly could not have committed. It particularly sickened me that neither the Pakistani government, nor any of the major Muslim organizations in the U.S. were actively seeking her release from what was a clearly politically-motivated and flagrantly unjust imprisonment. If I ran the Boston Marathon—held in the city where Aafia, a top scholar at MIT and Brandeis University—had excelled both scholastically and spiritually—it would have to be in her name. Once again thoughts of running Boston entered my head.

There were only two weeks left before the Boston Marathon when a tiny lump I’d had for three years on the side of my neck suddenly became inflamed. It turned out to be an inclusion cyst which developed an abscess. I tried ignoring it until after the marathon, but it only got larger and more inflamed. Then on Monday of the week prior to the marathon, I had a minor surgery for the cyst. Three days later (Thursday), I did a 15-mile run on a favorite tree-lined trail, with the gash on the side of my neck from the surgery, to see if I was up to the task of a marathon. I felt fine afterwards, and was egged on further to attain the seemingly unattainable.

On Saturday, I jumped in my car, packing little but my marathon outfit and some food items (I am a picky eater), and took off for Boston, arriving around 1:00 AM. The next day was Sunday, and I took the Boston subway to the mandatory bib number pickup at the John Hynes Convention Center, prayed a lot, and did little else.

Then, on Monday—Patriots Day in Boston—I ran the Boston Marathon wearing my long-sleeved black “Free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui” tee (prepared for me by brothers from Masjid Al-Islam in SE Washington, DC). I was the only Pakistani woman in the field of approximately 37,000 runners, and finished the very hilly course in 4 hours 4 minutes, despite high temperatures during the mid-afternoon race (Marathons are ordinarily held in the early morning to decrease the possibility of heat injury among the athletes. But in Boston, the runners in my “wave” did not start running until about 11:00 AM, and we did not finish until about 3:00 PM. I saw many runners being carried off in stretchers, likely as a result of the very warm weather. According to the organizers’ website, 810 people were unable to finish the race; the Boston Globe reported that 2,000 required medical treatment during or after the race.)

About an hour after finishing the race, I was in my car, and on the way back to Maryland, composing letters to the Boston Globe on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui in my head as I drove. I reached Maryland safely at 3:00 AM. God is Great.