By Abrar Mustafa

ISLAMABAD: While a large number of Pakistanis continue to believe that Aafia Siddiqui, now held guilty by a jury in the United States, was picked up in the year 2003 from Karachi, surprisingly even her own testimony in the court did not touch upon the real circumstances of her disappearance. Official documents available with this scribe in which the Pakistan Embassy in the US updated the foreign minister of the details of the case, there are many aspects of the case that have not been reported in the media in the country.

These documents reveal that the real undoing for Dr Aafia Siddiqui was her insistence that she would testify in the court while she had been advised not to do so by her legal defence team. “She even refused to talk to her mother on the phone before testifying in front of the court, as her mother wanted to dissuade her from going against the legal advice,” a source said and added that a Pakistan Embassy official of the level of minister also met her to convince her against testifying in person.

The official report at the Foreign Office complains that in strict legal terms, once she appeared to testify, it opened a window for the prosecution to question her and also to bring additional witnesses to directly contradict and rebut her testimony. Then the prosecution during cross examination was able to bring contradictions and inconsistencies (her written documents, documents found from her possession at the time of arrest, about son Ahmed, familiarity and use of firearms and statements made before the FBI and other US officials) to indicate that she was not a credible witness. The prosecution attorney’s also criticised her demeanor and evasive replies in answering even simple questions like her date of birth. Their appeal to the jury was that it should believe six eye-witnesses in this case US military men present at the occasion of alleged shooting.

The report says that earlier her defense team had successfully established the weaknesses in the story of the prosecution by exposing many loopholes. The legal team proved that there was no forensic and physical evidence (bullet casings, bullet fragments, steel penetrator, bullet holes, its impact and surrounding crater and gun shot residue, etc) to support the government case because the M-4 was not fired in the room. The room did not have the evidence one would expect to find if the M-4 had been fired. The room and science does not lie. The defense also brought into light the contradictions in the testimony of government eyewitnesses. The bullet holes the witnesses claimed were in a wall were actually present in the wall prior to the shooting incident, and this was shown on a videotape of the press conference given hours prior to the Americans coming to Ghazni.

The report submitted to the Foreign Office also states all the diplomatic efforts that were put up by the embassy in Washington DC. The embassy issued Note Verbale on different issues on various dates. These efforts ensured consular access, non intrusive body searches, meeting with family, once a month contact with family on the phone and provision of medical treatment and Halal food. The embassy also maintained regular contacts with Ms Siddiqui by consular visits and telephone calls. Pakistan’s Ambassador to USA, Husain Haqqani, also met her in June 2009 and assured her support and sought consent for engaging the lawyers. It may be noted that the lawyers were engaged on the recommendation of her brother Mohammad Ali Siddiqui. They were paid by a special fund of $2 million approved by Prime Minister Gilani.

Besides the legal support on the diplomatic front, there was an effort by the Foreign Office and the Embassy of Pakistan to get her repatriated in humanitarian grounds. The report reveals that ambassador met US Attorney General Michael B Mukasey, Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher and Director FBI Robert S Muller on 18 December 2008, in the Bush administration with the request. In the current administration, Department of State Deputy Secretary James Steinberg and Attorney General Eric Holder were approached with the same requests. Sources in the Foreign Office said that all the support that the government of Pakistan had provided, had been ignored by Aafia’s family and it appears that they are more interested in contesting the case through protest rallies in Pakistan instead of a legal battle in the US.

SOURCE : Thenews.com.pk

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