Follow Us
Monthly Archives: December 2004
Who’s Afraid of Aafia Siddiqui? (Must Read)
She went to MIT and Brandeis, married a Brigham and Women’s physician, made her home in Boston, cared for her children, and raised money for charities. Aafia Siddiqui was a normal woman living a normal American life. Until the FBI called her a terrorist.
The men were ready. They knew the woman who would be joining them for the week was a high-profile Al Qaeda operative. They’d been told she should be treated with the utmost respect. She would arrive in Liberia’s bustling capital, Monrovia, on a plane from Quetta, Pakistan. She was to be driven to the safe house, the Hotel Boulevard, where other Al Qaeda figures had stayed, and taken good care of until the deal was done.
The trip from the airport was a hot hour long, and the woman spoke in English to the driver on the way. The driver, who would later become the chief informant in a United Nations-led investigation, described her as a quiet Islamic woman who wore a traditional headscarf and kept mostly to herself. She spent the week holed up in her room, making trips into town for small errands.
