'twas four years ago since Tina posted this:

Dr Aafia Siddiqui, in her mid-30s, has a PhD in neurological sciences from the US. She is believed to have Pakistani and US nationality. She is wanted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as an "al-Qaeda operative and facilitator" and in connection with "possible terrorist threats" in the US. September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (caught in Pakistan) is believed to have told authorities about Aafia.

She disappeared, with her three children, a few months ago in Pakistan. Asia Times Online sources claim that she is in the custody of the ISI. All calls by her family and humanitarian groups for her to be produced in court have been ignored.

Acquaintances of Aafia say she was an ISI contact and played an active role as a "relief worker" in Chechnya and Bosnia - a role the government now does not want to reveal. She has also been connected with different Arab non-governmental organizations in the US, through which she also helped to supply aid and funds to Chechens.

However Aafia's case turns out, doubtless a number of al-Qaeda operators are already in detention in Pakistan to be produced when and as necessary.

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/193525.php, where the different exclamations are bolded.

Talk about witnesses to an accident seeing/hearing different things. HEH!

an article contextualising the disappeared issue in Pakistan.

I wonder is the photo they use actually Siddiqui?

Pakistani scientist 'was not held by US military': army spokeswoman

KABUL (AFP) — The US military in Afghanistan Wednesday rejected claims that Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui, arrested last month, had been in US military detention during the five years she was missing.

Siddiqui, 36, was arrested in the central town of Ghazni on July 17 by Afghan police who said they believed she had been planning a suicide attack.

She has been described by US officials as a "treasure trove" of information on Al-Qaeda.

Her arrest was the first time in five years she had been seen publicly and her family and lawyers allege she had been held captive since disappearing in Pakistan in 2003 -- possibly in a secret US or allied prison.

The US military based at Bagram, about 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of Kabul, said Siddiqui had only been to the base for military treatment for gunshot wounds after her arrest, and not before that.

"She has never been held in US military custody," spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green told AFP.

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** US requested to return Dr Aafia’s children: FO

** Jailed Pakistani a 'treasure trove' of information: report

** Judge order medical care for Aafia

Assistant US Attorney Christopher Lavigne said treatment was delayed because Siddiqui had refused to see a male physician since she was brought to the US a week ago. Fink said her client was willing to be seen by a male doctor.

Lavigne called Siddiqui a high-security risk because "she tried to shoot her way out" of custody.

"I appreciate what you're saying," the judge replied. "If somebody has gunshot wounds, I think they need to be seen."

Can the US be charged with depraved indifference for not being able to dig up a female doctor for a week? What bullshit, this story gets lamer with each report. ~ me

Terror suspect's court appearance raises questions about U.S. military conduct

Mother Held by U.S. as Al-Qaeda Suspect

By Carol D. Leonnig and Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 26, 2008; A02

U.S. authorities said yesterday that Afghan officials have detained since mid-July an 11-year-old U.S. citizen, the son of a Pakistani woman accused of firing at Afghan and U.S. personnel there.

In a letter to the family of Aafia Siddiqui, a suspected al-Qaeda operative who is in U.S. custody, federal prosecutors said photos and DNA tests strongly suggest that the youngster in Afghan custody is Siddiqui's son, Ahmed. The boy was detained July 18 when Afghan police arrested Siddiqui in what they described as a shootout near a government compound in Ghazni.

Siddiqui and her three children disappeared in Pakistan in 2003, and the case has been a cause celebre there ever since, prompting protests in Siddiqui's home town of Karachi and dozens of editorials in local papers. In the midst of an uproar over the disappearances of Pakistani suspects this summer, Afghan officials said they had captured Siddiqui after she fired on the compound. She is now in a federal prison in New York, charged with attempted murder.

The FBI had spent years seeking information on Siddiqui, a U.S.-educated neuroscientist who officials feared was an al-Qaeda operative with knowledge of biological weapons. During that time, federal prosecutors and FBI officials have told Siddiqui's mother, Ismat, they had no information on the location of Siddiqui or her children, an attorney for the family said yesterday.

The lawyers and Siddiqui family members yesterday questioned the U.S. government's account that Siddiqui had resurfaced five years after disappearing with her three young children in Pakistan and that she escaped Afghan and U.S. agents after she was taken into custody.

Siddiqui's family contended that the young mother and children were imprisoned during at least some of that time at a secret site, possibly by Afghan or Pakistani officials working in concert with the CIA. Her two younger children, who are also U.S. citizens and were 6 months and 5 years old when they disappeared, are still unaccounted for.

"Something is really dirty here. Everything about the government's story smells," said Elizabeth Fink, Siddiqui's attorney, who said her client was psychologically traumatized over an extended period of time. "Whatever happened to this woman is terrible, and it's incumbent on us to find out what it was."

The CIA and the Justice Department denied that the United States had been holding Siddiqui or her children.

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45 minutes ago

KABUL (AFP) — The young son of Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui will be returned to his family "soon" by Afghanistan after he was arrested with her more than a month ago, Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said Saturday.

Ahmed Siddiqui, 11, was captured in the central province of Ghazni on July 17 with his mother who was suspected to be planning a suicide attack. She was later accused of trying to kill US officials and is on trial in New York.

"We'll hand the child over to his family very soon," Spanta told reporters, without giving details.

The boy is being held by the attorney general's office in Kabul, government officials told AFP, also refusing to comment further.

New York-based Human Rights Watch this week urged the Afghan government to free the child, a US citizen.

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hmmmmm curiouser and curiouser

September 16, 2008
By CARLOTTA GALL and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA
NYT

KABUL, Afghanistan — The 12-year-old son of a Pakistani neuroscientist indicted in New York on charges of attacking American soldiers and F.B.I. agents in Afghanistan was handed over to Pakistani diplomats on Monday by Afghan officials for repatriation to relatives in Pakistan.

The boy, Ali Hassan, was detained with his mother, Aafia Siddiqui, in the town of Ghazni in July and has since been in Afghan government custody, officials said.

Ms. Siddiqui had been listed since 2004 as wanted by the United States government for her suspected links to Al Qaeda, and had been missing since 2003 until she turned up in Afghanistan a few months ago.

Her disappearance for five years, the accusations by her family in Pakistan that she had been detained all that time by American or Pakistani authorities, and the circumstances of her arrest have all been the cause of intense speculation.

The release of her son did little to clarify the questions. He did not speak at a brief ceremony before the news media in which he was handed over to the Pakistani chargé d’affaires, Asif Durrani.

Nevertheless, Afghan officials said that he had given an account under questioning that cast doubt on the family’s claims that Ms. Siddiqui was in United States military detention in Afghanistan for five years.

The boy told them that he had lost his parents in Pakistan’s 2005 earthquake and that he was adopted by Ms. Siddiqui, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sultan Ahmad Baheen, said. That suggests that she was free and living in Pakistan in 2005.

The spokesman for the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mohammed Sadiq, said, however, that the United States Justice Department had informed Pakistan in a letter that the “nuclear DNA of the boy matches that of Aafia Siddiqui,” indicating that he is her biological son.

The boy also told Afghan investigators that he and his mother had traveled to Afghanistan from Pakistan only a few days before they were taken into custody, Gen. Abdul Manan Farahi, head of the counterterrorism directorate of the Interior Ministry, said in an interview.

They were detained by the Afghan police and intelligence officials for acting suspiciously outside the governor’s office in Ghazni. The police found documents showing Ms. Siddiqui’s contacts with terrorist organizations, notes about bomb making, and maps and sketches of foreign bases in Afghanistan, General Farahi said.

The next day she was wounded, apparently in a struggle with American military and F.B.I. personnel in the police station, and was transferred to American custody. In New York, she was indicted on Sept. 2 on charges including attempted murder.

Afghan officials have said that Ms. Siddiqui seemed to be a militant jihadi. The Afghan security official who first approached her in Ghazni said she had acted aggressively and screamed to his police officers not to come near, calling them infidels.

General Farahi said the boy appeared to have been “brainwashed” and eventually admitted that he belonged to the extremist Pakistani group Jaish-e-Muhammad. Originally formed to fight in Kashmir, the group has established training camps in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and its fighters have been found in Afghanistan and in the valley of Swat.

The boy also told investigators that Ms. Siddiqui had gone to Afghanistan to look for her husband, a story that she had made up, General Farahi said.

“The boy was very smart as he did not want to reveal things like the woman’s activities and the organization that he was with,” General Farahi said.

“He was speaking fluent English and Urdu,” the general said.

“He was very brave, confident and courageous,” General Farahi said, adding, “He was aware of religious issues and about jihad and was well informed.”