- It's like a bad movie you've watched one too many times.
AG Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller stand before the cameras and
tell the people of the United States al-Qaeda is out there lurking. "Credible
intelligence from multiple sources indicates that al-Qaeda plans to attempt
an attack on the United States in the next few months," Ashcroft warns.
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- It is by now all so drearily familiar and predictable.
It's the same song and dance the Bushites have tirelessly performed since
the twin towers fell and everything changed. Even faithful flag-wavers
and sleepless paranoids must be bored with it after nearly three years.
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- Ashcroft rolls out a big wanted poster bearing the mugs
of several dour-looking Muslim bad guys. Each presents "a clear and
present danger" to the United States because of their language skills,
familiarity with American culture, and ability to travel under multiple
aliases and use forged documents, explains Ashcroft.
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- But wait a minute. Something is wrong here.
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- One of the suspects is Aafia Siddiqui, a former Boston
woman and American citizen with a biology degree from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
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- After 9/11 the FBI issued a global alert for Siddiqui.
"Although the FBI has no information indicating this individual is
connected to specific terrorist activities, the FBI would like to locate
and question this individual," explained a "Seeking Information"
page posted on the FBI's web site. Siddiqui's photo and particulars were
subsequently broadcast on American TV and radio. She was described as an
al-Qaeda operative. Last March it was reported she was arrested on the
way to the Karachi airport and interrogated by Pakistani officials.
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- But Pakistani officials deny this. "She has not
been arrested," said Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat during a
news conference covered by the Urdu daily on April 1, 2003. On the following
day Hayat repeated the assertion, adding that Siddiqui was involved with
al-Qaeda and on the run from the authorities.
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- According to a June 23, 2003 issue of Newsweek International,
the FBI became interested in Aafia Siddiqui because "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." The
Newsweek article repeated the claim Siddiqui was arrested in Pakistan,
contrary to the repeated assertions of the interior minister.
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- But according to a different version of Newsweek, Aafia
Siddiqui did more than simply rent a post office box for Majid Khan.
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- "Newsweek reported," wrote the Boston Globe,
"that [Hatem al-Dhahri, a Saudi Arabian man who shared a lease in
2001 on a Mission Hill, Boston, apartment with Siddiqui's now estranged
husband, Mohammad Amjad Khan] and another Saudi Arabian man who lived in
the building during 2001 were involved in a $20,000 wire transfer from
the Saudi Arabian embassy flagged as suspicious by Fleet Bank. The Saudi
embassy said that the transfer was routine financial assistance for medical
treatment." Fleet Bank filed a SARS (suspicious-activity report) with
the US Treasury Department and this alerted the FBI.
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- The SARS filed by Fleet Bank revealed several purchases
of interest to the FBI, primarily "debit-card purchases from stores
that 'specialize in high-tech military equipment and apparel,' including
Black Hawk Industries in Chesapeake, Va., and Brigade Quartermasters in
Georgia. (Black Hawk's Web site, advertises grips, mounts and parts for
AK-47s and other military-assault rifles as well as highly specialized
combat clothing, including vests designed for bomb disposal.)"
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- Naturally, for the FBI, these purchases spelled al-Qaeda
in 50 foot high neon letters.
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- At first the FBI claimed Pakistan had Siddiqui -- and
then suddenly they changed their minds. "She is not in custody,"
said John Iannarelli, a special agent with the FBI's national press office,
and was "certainly not being interviewed by the FBI ... We're still
looking for her."
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- On March 30, 2004, more than a year after Siddiqui's
disappearance, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn speculated that she had indeed
been detained by authorities and subsequently "handed over to the
Americans."
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- On December 30, 2003, according to the Dawn account,
"Dr Fawzia Siddiqui, elder sister of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, saw Mr Faisal
Saleh Hayat at Islamabad ... regarding the whereabouts of Dr Aafia Siddiqui
... Mr Faisal Saleh Hayat told Dr Fawzia ... that according to his information
Dr Aafia Siddiqui had already been released and that Dr Fawzia Siddiqui
should go home and wait for some phone call from her sister. But, alas,
that phone call has not yet come (third week of March) and the whole family
of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, including the author of these lines, are in a state
of severe mental torture."
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- If Aafia Siddiqui was "handed over to the Americans,"
as Dawn claims, why is her face plastered on Ashcroft's wanted poster?
Is there something Ashcroft is not telling us about Siddiqui? Is it possible
Siddiqui was released by the Pakistanis and simply disappeared? Or was
made to disappear? Nobody knows.
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- During Ashcroft's news conference, not a soul asked these
questions. But then nobody asks John Ashcroft tough questions, least of
all journalists from the corporate media -- they want to be invited back
and above all keep their jobs.
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- Is it possible "professional" journalists --
with massive databases and powerful research tools at their fingertips
-- are unaware of Siddiqui's disappearance and the claim that she is already
in US custody?
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- What does it say about the corporate media when one guy
searching Google with a dial-up internet connection reveals more about
Aafia Siddiqui than the New York Times, CNN, and Fox News combined? Or
is there a reason the corporate media has not commented on what Newsweek
and the Boston Globe reported about Aafia Siddiqui last year? Is it intellectual
laziness or something else?
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- Obviously, Bush does not like to answer questions, especially
questions about his business dealings with Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden
family, a subject Michael Moore deals with in his latest documentary. Is
it possible Aafia Siddiqui's association with people receiving money from
Saudi Arabia -- transactions and debit-card purchases that sent up red
flags at the Treasury Department and the FBI -- suddenly became a forbidden
subject? And if so, why is Siddiqui's photograph on Ashcroft's wanted poster?
We don't know. And nobody seems inclined to ask, least of all the corporate
media.
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- All we know is Aafia Siddiqui has disappeared.
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