Aafia Siddiqui’s Mother’s Moving Letter to Obama

I sent my daughter to your country as a seventeen year old, to get the kind of education she couldn’t get anywhere else in the world. I taught her that the values that matter most are kindness and justice, to care for people in need, and to help the helpless. I taught my daughter that this is what America stood for. But I wonder if you have forgotten those values. Her tow US born citizen children ask why they were kidnapped and tortured and why their country did this to them? Can you answer that?

by Ismat Siddiqui

( February 7, 2016, Karachi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Here is an open letter from political prisoner Aafia Siddiqui’s mother to the President of the US. Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui and her mother Ismat live in their family home in Karachi with Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s children who were restored to them when she was brought to the United States for trial and incarceration. They have worked tirelessly for Aafia’s release since she was abducted in 2003. The letter was transcribed Judy Bello.

Barak Obama
The President
White House
Washington, DC20500

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Ismat Siddiqui. I am a mother, a grandmother, a widow, but most importantly I am your fellow human being. As I write this to you I am in failing health, so you will understand my sense of urgency.

Aafia Siddiqui could have been anyone’s daughter. But she is my daughter

Mr. President, my daughter Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, is someone about whom you may have already heard something. Most likely something negative. On the internet and in the press there are literally millions of pages of conjecture, praise, innuendo and a blend of fact and fiction woven into a picture of a person who has been raised to sainthood by supporters and vilified as a demon by detractors. The truth of one human being is lost in the midst of this. The truth is that Aafia is a mother of three and a brilliant Muslim woman whose only passion was to bring education to her people. For this she studied at the finest institutions in the world including MIT and Brandeis in the United States. Then somewhere in the blind aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Aafia became a victim of the war on terror.

This is not just a sad story told by a sick mother. It is a reality of torture, of abuse, humiliation, deception and barbarism by those who claim to be the most civilized. It is a grave injustice by those who claim to be the most just. It is an epic of prejudice by a nation that claims to be free of it. This is not just one woman’s ordeal; it is a slur and blackening stigma on the world’s mightiest nation and its rulers. Sir, it is a shameful legacy of two American administrations. I will not go into the horrendous case, its merits or demerits as I am sure the prosecutors with much greater access to you will give you the “facts” necessary to justify themselves. But I am attaching a fact sheet prepared by the International Justice Network in the hope that you will glance at it and see that there is another side. I am told that you were a brilliant lawyer and among the top of your peers at Harvard so I hope you will be able to recognize fact from fiction.

Mr. President, the thought of what my daughter has gone through these past years, being kidnapped, forcibly separated from her children, tortured, shot, beaten, shackled and strip searched tears my heart apart. Even now the conditions of her detention and treatment defy common decency.

After arriving in New York City with oozing bullet wounds, she was denied any medical care for a month. Both in New York and at Carswell Medical Facility in Fort Worth her captors have continued a pattern of threatening her if she cooperates with her lawyers and punishing her when she does. She has been placed in a situation where she is effectively denied access to family for fear of brutal retaliation. It is now over 12 years of agony. Five years in secret detention and seven under institutionalized cover.

I sent my daughter to your country as a seventeen year old, to get the kind of education she couldn’t get anywhere else in the world. I taught her that the values that matter most are kindness and justice, to care for people in need, and to help the helpless. I taught my daughter that this is what America stood for. But I wonder if you have forgotten those values. Her tow US born citizen children ask why they were kidnapped and tortured and why their country did this to them? Can you answer that?

Aafia is committed to peace, to justice and to God. She is not a terrorist. With her education and passion for children she would have been a brilliant light in the darkest corners of this world. Her research in early childhood learning could have helped millions of children everywhere. My daughter would have been an asset in the world that needs these values more than ever.

I appeal to you to use your Presidential power of pardon and undo one of the gravest injustices of our time. This will be a gesture that will gain you immense goodwill in the Muslim world that millions of dollars in aid will not. This simple gesture on your part will warm the heart of a dying mother and revive the American way of mercy and compassion. I urge you to, for a moment; just think as a father, who can save a daughter from doom. I can assure you regardless of what your intelligence agents may tell you, my daughter is no threat to anyone. Letting her go will only make you more powerful and glorious as an act of mercy is twice blessed.

Thank you very much for your time,

Ismat Siddiqui

Judy Bello is a member of the Aafia Movement and met Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s sister Fowzia, a Neurologist who specializes in Epilepsy, her mother Ismat and her children Miriam and Ahmed in their home in Karachi in the fall of 2012. She and Joe Lombardo met with them as representatives of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC).