His sister, whose release he has demanded, is Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, who is imprisoned in Texas for attempting to kill US service members in Afghanistan.
Siddiqui is serving an 86-year prison sentence after being convicted in Manhattan in 2010 of trying to shoot US military officers while she was in custody in Afghanistan two years earlier.
For the US Department of Justice, which accused my friend of being an al-Qaeda operative, her arrest was an important step in the fight against extremism, but for its supporters, many of whom believed in her innocence, the case embodied what they saw as an unjust US justice system.
Who is Aafia Siddiqui?
Siddiqui is a Pakistani neuroscientist who has studied in the United States at prestigious universities, including Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It caught the attention of US law enforcement in the years after the September 11 attacks. The FBI and the Supreme Department of Justice described her as an “agent and facilitator of al-Qaeda” in a press conference in May 2004 in which they warned of intelligence showing that al-Qaeda planned an attack in the coming months.
In 2008, she was arrested by the authorities in Afghanistan. US officials said they found in her possession handwritten notes discussing the making of the so-called dirty bombs, and showing various locations in the United States that could be targeted in a “mass casualty attack.”
Inside an interrogation room at an Afghan police compound, the authorities said they grabbed a US army officer’s rifle and opened fire on members of the US interrogation team.
She was convicted in 2010 of charges including attempted murder of US citizens outside the United States.
At the sentencing hearing, she made scattered remarks in which she delivered a message of world peace – as she forgave the judge. She was frustrated by the arguments put forward by her lawyers who said she deserved leniency because she was “mentally ill”.
What is the reaction?
Pakistani officials immediately denounced the punishment, which sparked protests in several cities and criticism in the media.
The prime minister at the time, Yusuf Raza Gilani, called her “the daughter of the nation” and vowed to campaign for her release from prison.
In the years that followed, Pakistani leaders publicly floated the idea of trade-offs that might lead to her release.
Months before today, my friend was severely beaten several times by other female prisoners, and she was close to death.
Her exposure to constant violence in prison prompted human rights organizations, and her supporters, to demand her release or an improvement in her prison conditions.
The 12-hour hostage-taking operation inside a synagogue in the US state of Texas ended with the killing of the gunman, who he said was my friend’s brother, and the release of the hostages.
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