Pakistani woman spends 4 years in Bagram as Prisoner 650
Tehran Times Poltical Desk
TEHRAN -- British journalist Yvonne Ridley flew to Pakistan on a whirlwind trip this week to highlight the plight of a woman who has been held in U.S. custody for more than four years.
She referred to the woman, known only by her prisoner number 650, as The Grey Lady of Bagram.
More than 100 journalists attended the press conference hosted by Pakistan political leader Imran Khan who pledged his full support to Ridley’s mission, which is part of a Cage Prisoner Campaign to help the female detainee.
A statement of support from British MP and RESPECT Party leader George Galloway was also read out during the conference.
Details of Prisoner 650 are being kept secret by the U.S. military.
On Monday night she said: “I think everyone was shocked to hear that the Americans were holding this woman at Bagram in Afghanistan. From the information coming through I am told she is being held in exactly the same conditions as the men and has absolutely no privacy when it comes to toilet and shower facilities.
“This would never happen to a Western woman and it shows just how women are viewed by the U.S. military. There is even a suggestion she has been molested and sexually abused by her captors. We need to demand the truth,” added Ridley who was held captive herself in Afghanistan for 11 days in September 2001.
“I was released on humanitarian grounds. Mercifully my treatment was good, respectful and decent, although still terrifying,” she added.
Ridley, also a patron of the organization Cage Prisoner, revealed how she first read about the woman in a book written by ex-Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg called Enemy Combatant.
“I remembered Moazzam telling me about the woman’s screams and how he first imagined they could be from his wife. In truth, I thought maybe he had just been listening to a tape recorder as part of a form of mental torture.
“However, we now know the screams came from a woman who has been held in Bagram for some years. And without compromising anyone, we can also reveal from impeccable sources that her prison number is 650.
“This information has been enough to scramble the Pakistan media into action by demanding the return of this woman to her homeland immediately,” added Ridley.
Joining her at the open air press conference in Islamabad at the headquarters of Khan’s PTI party was Saghir Hussain, a lawyer and member of Cage.
He handed over a dossier prepared by Cage which reveals the full extent of the Disappeared from Pakistan… individuals who have been literally kidnapped from the streets.
“Prisoner 650 is just the tip of a very nasty iceberg of human rights abuses, illegal detentions and rendition flights. It is a shameful episode in Pakistan's history which must be put right.”
Amina Masood Janjua, chair of the Defense of Human Rights, also joined the platform along with other supporters whose husbands, sons and brothers have disappeared without trace. She thanked Cage for its dossier and the supporting work it had conducted on the Disappeared.
“I wonder how can we hand over our sister to the non-Muslims for their illegal trial by men whose history is full of rape and other abuses to prisoners,” the Pakistani daily Dawn quoted Ridley as saying.
Ms. Ridley read the text from the book’s section covering Mr. Begg’s stay in Bagram: “I began to hear the chilling screams of a woman next door… Why have you got a woman next door? They told me there was no woman. But I was unconvinced. Those screams echoed through my worst nightmares for a long time. And I later learned in Guantanamo, from other prisoners, that they had heard the screams too.”
She said the account had been corroborated by four Arabs who had escaped from Bagram in July 2005. “While on the run, one not only confirmed he had heard a woman’s screams, but said he had seen her.”
Ms. Ridley said, “My story made international headlines, front page pictures and major stories on TV. But there has not been one word, not one paragraph about Prisoner 650 -- the ‘grey lady’ of Bagram, a murderous detention facility under control of the U.S. military and intelligence services.”
She urged every Pakistani to ring America, and ask them who Prisoner 650 is. What was her crime? Who else was being held illegally? How many secret detention centers were there?
Ms. Ridley’s colleague Saghir Hussain gave details about other people of the country who had ‘disappeared’.
“All, like the grey lady of Bagram, have been illegally abducted by secretive intelligence agencies. They began disappearing in 2001 during the so-called war on terror,” he said.
Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan demanded that the government hold an investigation into the case. “What has the sovereign parliament done about the missing persons?” he asked.-
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Where is Dr Afia Siddiqui? asks AHRC
Dr. Afia Siddiqui [Photo] left her mother’s house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, Sindh province, along with her three children, in a Metro-cab on March 30, 2003 to catch a flight for Rawalpindi, Punjab province, but never reached the airport. The press reports claimed that Dr. Afia had been picked-up by Pakistani intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggested that she was handed over to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of her arrest she was 30 years and the mother of three sons the oldest of which was four and the youngest only one month.
A few days later an American news channel, NBC, reported that Afia had been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of facilitating money transfers for terror networks of Osama Bin Laden. The mother of the victim, Mrs. Ismat (who has since passed away) termed the NBC report absurd. She went on to say that Dr. Afia is a neurological scientist and has been living with her husband, Amjad, in the USA for several years.
On April 1, 2003, a small news item was published in an Urdu daily with reference to a press conference of the then Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat. When questioned with regard to Dr. Afia’s arrest he denied that she had been arrested. This was followed by another Urdu daily article on April 2 regarding another press conference in which the same minister said Dr. Afia was connected to Al Qaeda and that she had not been arrested as she was absconding. He added: “You will be astonished to know about the activities of Dr. Afia” A Monthly English magazine of Karachi in a special coverage on Dr. Afia reported that one week after her disappearance, a plain clothed intelligence went to her mother’s house and warned her, “We know that you are connected to higher-ups but do not make an issue out of your daughter’s disappearance.” According to the report the mother was threatened her with ‘dire consequences’ if she made a fuss.
Whilst Dr. Afia’s whereabouts remain unknown, there are reports of a woman called ‘Prisoner 650′ is being detained in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison and that she has been tortured to the point where she has lost her mind. Britain’s Lord Nazeer Ahmed, (of the House of Lords), asked questions in the House about the condition of Prisoner 650 who, according to him is physically tortured and continuously raped by the officers at prison. Lord Nazeer has also submitted that Prisoner 650 has no separate toilet facilities and has to attend to her bathing and movements in full view of the other prisoners.
Also, on July 6, 2008 a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years. “I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her,” Ms Ridley said at a press conference.
Ms Ridley, who went to Pakistan to appeal for help, said the case came to her attention when she read the book, The Enemy Combatant, by a former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg. After being seized in February 2002 in Islamabad, Mr Begg was held in detention centres in Kandahar and Bagram for about a year before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. He recounted his experiences in the book after his release in 2005. Mr. Imran Khan, leader of Justice Party (T.I) suspects that prisoner 650 is the Dr. Afia Siddiqui and USA and Pakistani authorities are hiding facts of ‘Prisoner 650′.
To date, neither the American nor the Pakistani government have come out about the arrest and detention of Dr. Afia in either Bagram or Guantanamo Bay where suspected terrorists are held. On December 30, 2003 Dr. Fawzia Siddiqui, Dr. Afia elder sister met with Mr Faisal Saleh Hayat at Islamabad with Mr Ejazul Haq, MNA, regarding the whereabouts of Dr. Afiai. Mr Faisal told Dr. Fawzia and Mr Ejazul Haq that according to his information Dr. Afia Siddiqui had already been released and that she (Dr. Fawzia) should go home and wait for a phone call from her sister.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Dr. Afia Siddiqui, who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, for about 10 years and did her PhD in genetics, returned to Pakistan in 2002. Having failed to get a suitable job, she again visited the US on a valid visa in February 2003 to search for a job and to submit an application to the US immigration authorities. She moved there freely and came back to Karachi by the end of February 2003 after renting a post office box in her name in Maryland for the receipt of her mail. It has been claimed by the FBI (Newsweek International, June 23, 2003, issue) that the box was hired for one Mr Majid Khan, an alleged member of Al Qaeda residing in Baltimore.
Throughout March 2003 flashes of the particulars of Dr. Afia were telecast with her photo on American TV channels and radios painting her as a dangerous Al Qaeda person needed by the FBI for interrogation. On learning of the FBI campaign against her she went underground in Karachi and remained so till her kidnapping. The June 23, 2003, issue of Newsweek International was exclusively devoted to Al Qaeda. The core of the issue was an article “Al Qaeda’s Network in America”. The article has three photographs of so-called Al Qaeda members - Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Dr. Afia Siddiqui and Ali S. Al Marri of Qatar who has studied in the US like Dr. Siddiqui and had long since returned to his homeland. In this article, which has been authored by eight journalists who had access to FBI records, the only charge leveled against Dr. Afia is that “she rented a post-office box to help a former resident of Baltimore named Majid Khan (alleged Al Qaeda suspect) to help establish his US identity.
