Pakistan calls on US to repatriate Aafia Siddiqui

Islamabad has appealed to Washington to repatriate the female Pakistani scientist convicted in a US court of attempting to murder US military interrogators and FBI agents.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was recently found guilty by a US jury of charges that she has vehemently denied to have committed. The main charge against her was using a US warrant officer's M-4 rifle while being interrogated in 2008 for an alleged possession of 'documents detailing a 'terrorist' plan.'

"Pakistan would provide her legal assistance as the case passes through subsequent stages in the judicial system, the US government may look at the possibility of her repatriation to Pakistan under the Prisoner Exchange Agreement," said Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari to the visiting US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke in Islamabad, a Press TV correspondent reported late Thursday.

Siddiqui vanished in Karachi, Pakistan with her three children on March 30, 2003. US officials allege that she was seized on July 17, 2008 by Afghan security forces in the Ghazni Province while in possession of documents, including formulas for explosives and chemical weapons.

Human rights groups allege that Siddiqui had been secretly held and tortured at the infamous US base in Bagram, north of Kabul, for five years prior to the alleged 2008 shooting.

In the final stages of her trial in the Manhattan Federal Court, Siddiqui's lawyer Linda Moreno also argued that "there is no physical evidence that an M-4 rifle was touched by Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, let alone fired."

Siddiqui's case has been very controversial since most of the evidence against her are circumstantial and based on US intelligence and military agents in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The harsh treatment of the US-educated scientist and her five-year secret detention and shooting has provoked an outrage in the Muslim world, especially her native country of Pakistan.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118991§ionid=351020401.