Dr Aafia diagnosed with chronic depression
Five years of torture is enough to break the strongest person. She is a frail woman, a mother most probably innocent. I don’t know when will her miseries end. She deserves to be united with her kids. Her son is said to be held in Afghanistan. He is only 11 years old. It’s beyong understanding why an eleven years old has been treated like a criminal?
Today’s paper carried this news report about her mental state:
“Saturday, September 13, 2008
NEW YORK: Dr Aafia Siddiqui, who is under US detention for allegedly trying to kill American soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan, has been diagnosed with chronic depression, according to the court documents released today.Federal Judge Richard Berman ordered an examination of Dr Siddiqui last week after she refused to appear in the court to answer charges because of her objection to being strip-searched before coming to the court, a requirement for all defendants held in custody.
Dr Siddiqui, a US-educated neuroscientist who disappeared mysteriously in Pakistan in 2003, was examined and first diagnosed with psychosis on Tuesday, Sept 2 by Bureau of Prisons psychologist Dr Diane McLean, according to a letter on Thursday from the warden of Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center to Judge Berman. She is reported to be in “depressed mood, anxiety, ruminative thoughts concerning her son’s welfare, poor sleep, and moderate appetite.” The letter also describes a hallucination: “She also reported seeing her daughter in her cell, and was unable to apply appropriate reality testing to this phenomenon.”Dr Siddiqui politely declined to receive psychotropic drugs, the letter said.”
A few days ago I came across this article written by Joanne Mariner, she wrote this regarding her son Ahmad:
“11-Year-Old Ahmed Siddiqui
Besides the question of where Siddiqui herself has been all of the years, an even more pressing question is where are her children?
To date, the whereabouts of the two youngest children – who should now be about 5 and 10 years old – are unknown. But Siddiqui’s oldest son, Ahmed, an 11-year-old with American citizenship, is in Afghan custody.
According to an Afghan Interior Ministry official quoted in the Washington Post, Ahmed Siddiqui was held briefly by the Interior Ministry when he was arrested with his mother in July, and then he was transferred to the custody of the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), the country’s intelligence agency. The NDS is notorious for its brutal treatment of detainees.
Under Afghan and international law, Ahmed Siddiqui is too young to be treated as a criminal suspect. Under Afghanistan’s Juvenile Code, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is 13. And according to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors the treatment of children globally, a minimum age of criminal responsibility below age 12 is “not … internationally acceptable.”
Human Rights Watch has called upon the Afghan authorities to release Ahmed Siddiqui to members of his biological family, who reside in Pakistan, or to a child welfare organization that can provide proper care until he is reunited with his family. As Human Rights Watch has emphasized, an 11-year-old should never have been transferred to the custody of the NDS.”
