Aafia Siddiqui

On November 14 — a very rainy Sunday in London — I was one of a number of speakers who gathered outside the Pakistani embassy for an event, “Bring Aafia Home,” which was organized by the Justice for Aafia Coalition, to urge the Pakistani government to do all it can to secure the return of […]

In sifting through the avalanche of US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, only the Guardian, in the Western media, has picked up on cables from Islamabad relating to the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist who disappeared with her three young children in Karachi on March 30, 2003, and did not reappear until […]

On Wednesday December 1, from 6.30 to 9.30 pm, I’ll be discussing the fate of Aafia Siddiqui at the London Muslim Centre, 46-92 Whitechapel Road, London, E1 1JX, with other speakers including Moazzam Begg, former Guantánamo prisoner and the director of Cageprisoners, and the journalist Yvonne Ridley, who is a patron of Cageprisoners, and has […]

In an attempt to maintain pressure on the Pakistani government to secure the return to Pakistan of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the neuroscientist who, in September, was sentenced in New York to 86 years in prison, the Justice for Aafia Coalition is holding a week-long series of events around the world, entitled “Bring Aafia Home.” As […]

On September 18, I was delighted to be asked to attend “Eid Without Aafia,” and to conduct a live interview with former Guantánamo prisoners Shafiq Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed. The event, in east London, was organized by the Justice for Aafia Coalition to raise awareness about the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist […]

I’m cross-posting below an extraordinary account by former Guantánamo prisoner (and Cageprisoners director) Moazzam Begg of his first visit to Pakistan since he was abducted from his house in Islamabad on January 31, 2002, and subsequently held in US custody — in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo — for three years. Moazzam’s account includes retracing his […]

To be honest, I can hardly express sufficiently my shock at the news that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist who was rendered to the US to face a trial after she reportedly tried — and failed — to shoot two US soldiers in Ghazni, Afghanistan in July 2008, has been sentenced to 86 years […]

Today, please spare a thought for Omar Khadr, the only Canadian citizen in Guantánamo, who was seized in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002, when he was just 15 years old. Omar is 24 years old today, and has grown, physically, into a man during the eight years and two months he has spent in US […]

At the end of this month, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, is due to be sentenced in New York, after a trial earlier this year resulted in her conviction for opening fire on FBI agents and US military personnel in a police station in Ghazni, Afghanistan, where she was being interrogated in 2008. I […]

I recently watched (for the first time, I concede), the film “In the Name of the Father,” about the Guildford Four, in which Emma Thompson plays the part of Gareth Peirce, who exposed the abhorrent miscarriage of justice in that dreadful case of torture and false confessions, which was only overturned after Gerry Conlon, Paul […]