Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist currently incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, is serving an 86-year sentence and has sought a presidential pardon.
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui characterizes her imprisonment as “a blatant miscarriage of justice.” Siddiqui has been in a U.S. prison for over 14 years, but recent developments have spurred hope for her release due to what her lawyer describes as “new evidence” pointing to her innocence, according to Sky News.
Maintaining her innocence throughout, Siddiqui expressed optimism that circumstances might shift in her favour. “I hope I am not forgotten, and I hope that one day soon I will be released,” she conveyed through her attorney to the British news outlet. She described her daily experiences as torturous, asserting, “I am a victim of injustice, pure and simple. One day, Inshallah (God-willing), I will be released from this torment.”
In a comprehensive 76,500-word dossier, her legal representative, Clive Stafford Smith, appealed to outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden to pardon Siddiqui. The document outlines a series of alleged intelligence failures that initially implicated her and cites witness testimonies unavailable during her trial.
Stafford Smith argues that Siddiqui was mistakenly abducted along with her three children during a 2003 visit to Pakistan and subsequently handed over to the CIA, which then transported her to Bagram air base in Afghanistan. However, at her 2010 trial, the presiding judge noted, “There is no credible evidence in the record that US officials and/or agencies detained Siddiqui” before her 2008 arrest and deemed the allegations unsubstantiated.
Further complicating her case, her attorney pointed out misunderstandings regarding her academic background; intelligence agencies mistakenly believed Siddiqui was a nuclear physicist potentially working on a radioactive bomb, whereas she holds a PhD in education.
