What happened to Binyam
The case of the British resident Binyam Mohamed might interest those who are following the story of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. The US Justice Department dropped the key allegations against Binyam, according to Washington Post, October 15. However:
one of the confessions that was tortured out of Binyam is so ludicrous that it was soon dropped, but not before Clive Stafford Smith had learnt of it and had been able to use it to demonstrate the extent to which it indicated that all of Binyam’s “confessions” were untrustworthy [From blog entry at One Heart for Peace]
According to this “confession”, Binyam admitted having dinner with al Qaeda personnel in Karachi when, as it turned out later, two of the said personnel were already in US custody on the said date!
Those who follow the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui often wonder what motive or purpose any authorities might have had for keeping her in detention for five long years and committing those attrocities which have been reported in the press. Unfortunately, some of the things which Binyam tells about his own ordeal seem to have a dark, horrendous analogy:
Some of the time they said that some big people in al-Qaeda were talking about me. Some of the time they told me that the U.S. had a story they wanted from me and it was their job to get it. They talked about Jose Padilla and they said I was going to testify against him and big people. They named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Ibn Sheikh al-Libi. I was meant to be working with these people, giving them ideas like the dirty bomb. It is hard to pin down the exact story, because what they wanted changed all the time. First in Morocco it changed, then when I was in the Dark Prison, then in Bagram and again in Guantánamo Bay. Binyam explained that, between the savage beatings and the razor cuts to his penis, his torturers “would tell me what to say.” He added that even towards the end of his time in Morocco, they were still “training me what to say,” and one of them told him, “We’re going to change your brain.” [From blog entyry at One Heart for Peace]
It seems possible that some of these things also happened to Aafia, and and for similar purposes – except that in that case the victims included three minor children as well.
SOURCE: aboutaafia.blogspot.com
