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Friday, September 24, 2010

US court sentences kidnapped Pakistani woman


The kidnappers were US soldiers and FBI agents acting outside their jurisdiction: in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Aafia Sidiqqi, who is a neuroscientist and hence a most unlikely "Taliban" (who are against any sort of education for women), was allegedly suspected by her captors to be an Al Qaeda sympathizer who claim that they found instructions for making bombs and New York maps in her apartment (what to me looks like the typical made-up evidence). 

Sidiqqi however she denies the accusation's claims and says that she was kidnapped and held for five years in a secret prison in Afghan soil.

According to the accusation it was then when she managed to grab one of her captors' guns but she was the only one injured in the shooting that ensued. She also denies this accusation.

Lacking any objective evidence other than the statements from the parties should cause, in good justice, an acquittal but instead she has been sentenced to what is in practice a life sentence. 


The case has caused an uproar in her native Pakistan, where people simply don't believe the accusations, specially as we all know that the "extraordinary rendition" strategy of kidnapping suspects and holding them in secret prisons in foreign soil was and still is a most disturbing reality. 

Sidiqqi declared in the trial that she is committed to World Peace:

I do not want any bloodshed. I do not want any misunderstanding. I really want to make peace and end the wars.

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