Sister petitions IHC for Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s release

ISLAMABAD: Dr Fouzia Siddiqui, sister to Dr Aafia Siddiqui, Friday submitted a petition to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) seeking release of her sister from the US prison.
The petitioner has attached the same letter to the petition that the incumbent Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif had written to Mr. Gilani on November 9, 2008 urging him to highlight the issue of Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s detention at international forums.
Nawaz had declared Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s detention a “blackening stigma on the honor of the nation”.
Through this petition, Dr Fouzia has requested the court to ask Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government to take up this matter with the US and at the international forums in a manner that he had desired when he was out of power.
The petitioner has cited PM’s adviser on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Tariq Fatemi, secretary Ministry of Foreign Affairs, principal secretary to the prime minister and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan as respondents.
Justice Noorul Haq N. Qureshi of the IHC heard the matter and issued notices to the respondents seeking their comments within 10 days time.
The letter that the petitioner attached to the petition Mian Nawaz Sharif said: “Illegal and concealed confinement of Dr Aafia Siddiqui is an example of human rights violation meted out to a citizen of Pakistan…It is a blackening stigma on the honor of the nation when one of its women is undergoing such despicable trauma for crime known even to the trial authorities…her case should be highlighted at the United Nations as her illegal confinement is a blatant violation of human rights.”
The petitioner reminded the PML-N government its concerns while it was out of power and prayed the court to direct the government to raise this issue as it had been desired by Nawaz Sharif.
The petitioner claimed that her sister along with her children was kidnapped from Karachi in 2003 and taken to Afghanistan where they remained in Bagram jail in the US intelligence custody. It was in 2008 when a British journalist Yvonne Ridley discovered her as prisoner number 650 at Bagram jail.