[THS] !!!!!! Yvonne Ridley: The Truth About US Justice

[Peter Webster]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24605.htm

The Truth About US Justice

By Yvonne Ridley

February 06, 2010 "Information Clearing House" - -Many of us are still in a state of
shock over the guilty verdict returned on Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

The response from the people of Pakistan was predictable and overwhelming and I
salute their spontaneous actions.

From Peshawar to Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and beyond they marched in their
thousands demanding the return of Aafia.

Even some of the US media expressed discomfort over the verdict returned by the
jurors 
 there was a general feeling that something was not right.

Everyone had something to say, everyone that is except the usually verbose US
Ambassador Anne Patterson who has spent the last two years briefing against Dr
Aafia and her supporters.

This is the same woman who claimed I was a fantasist when I gave a press
conference with Tehreek e Insaf leader Imran Khan back in July 2008 revealing the
plight of a female prisoner in Bagram called the Grey Lady. She said I was talking
nonsense and stated categorically that the prisoner I referred to as “650” did not
exist.

By the end of the month she changed her story and said there had been a female
prisoner but that she was most definitely not Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

By that time Aafia had been gunned down at virtually point blank range in an Afghan
prison cell jammed full of more than a dozen US soldiers, FBI agents and Afghan
police.

Her Excellency briefed the media that the prisoner had wrested an M4 gun from one
soldier and fired off two rounds and had to be subdued. The fact these bullets failed
to hit a single person in the cell and simply disappeared did not resonate with the
diplomat.

In a letter dripping in untruths on August 16 2008 she decried the “erroneous and
irresponsible media reports regarding the arrest of Ms Aafia Siddiqui”. She went on
to say: “Unfortunately, there are some who have an interest in simply distorting the
facts in an effort to manipulate and inflame public opinion. The truth is never served
by sensationalism
”

When Jamaat Islami invited me on a national tour of Pakistan to address people
about the continued abuse of Dr Aafia and the truth about her incarceration in
Bagram, the US Ambassador continued to issue rebuttals.

She assured us all that Dr Aafia was being treated humanely had been given
consular access as set out in international law 
 hmm. Well I have a challenge for Ms
Patterson today. I challenge her to repeat every single word she said back then and
swear it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

As Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s trial got underway, the US Ambassador and some of her
stooges from the intelligence world laid on a lavish party at the US Embassy in
Islamabad for some hand-picked journalists where I’ve no doubt in between the
dancing, drinks and music they were carefully briefed about the so-called facts of the
case.

Interesting that some of the potentially incriminating pictures taken at the private
party managed to find the Ambassador was probably hoping to minimize the impact
the trial would have on the streets of Pakistan proving that, for the years she has
been holed up and barricaded behind concrete bunkers and barbed wire, she has
learned nothing about this great country of Pakistan or its people.

One astute Pakistani columnist wrote about her: “The respected lady seems to have
forgotten the words of her own country’s 16th president Abraham Lincoln
(1809-1865): “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people
some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”.

And the people of Pakistan proved they are nobody’s fool and responded to the guilty
verdict in New York in an appropriate way.

When injustice is the law it is the duty of everyone to rise up and challenge that
injustice in any way possible.

The response – so far – has been restrained and measured but it is just the start. A
sentence has yet to be delivered by Judge Richard Berman in May.

Of course there has been a great deal of finger pointing and blame towards the jury
in New York who found Dr Aafia guilty of attempted murder.

Observers asked how they could ignore the science and the irrefutable facts 
 there
was absolutely no evidence linking Dr Aafia to the gun, no bullets, no residue from
firing it.

But I really don’t think we can blame the jurors for the verdict - you see the jury
simply could not handle the truth. Had they taken the logical route and gone for the
science and the hard, cold, clinical facts it would have meant two things. It would
have meant around eight US soldiers took the oath and lied in court to save their own
skins and careers or it would have meant that Dr Aafia Siddiqui was telling the truth.

And, as I said before, the jury couldn’t handle the truth. Because that would have
meant that the defendant really had been kidnapped, abused, tortured and held in
dark, secret prisons by the US before being shot and put on a rendition flight to New
York. It would have meant that her three children – two of them US citizens – would
also have been kidnapped, abused and tortured by the US.

They say ignorance is bliss and this jury so desperately wanted not to believe that the
US could have had a hand in the kidnapping of a five-month -old baby boy, a five-
year-old girl and her seven-year-old brother.

They couldn’t handle the truth 
 it is as simple as that.

Well I, and many others across the world like me, can’t handle any more lies.
America’s reputation is lying in the lowest gutters in Pakistan at the moment and it
can’t sink any lower.

The trust has gone, there is only a burning hatred and resentment towards a
superpower which sends unmanned drones into villages to slaughter innocents.

It is fair to say that America’s goodwill and credibility is all but washed up with most
honest, decent citizens of Pakistan.

And I think even Her Excellency Anne Patterson recognizes that fact which is why she
is now keeping her mouth shut.

If she has any integrity and any self respect left she should stand before the Pakistan
people and ask for their forgiveness for the drone murders, the extra judicial killings,
the black operations, the kidnapping, torture and rendition of its citizens, the water-
boarding, the bribery, the corruption and, not least of all, the injustice handed out to
Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her family.

She should then pick up the phone to the US President and tell him to release Aafia
and return Pakistan’s most loved, respected and famous daughter and reunite her
with the two children who are still missing.

Then she should re-read her letter of August 16, 2008 and write another 
 one of
resignation.


Yvonne Ridley is a patron of Cageprisoners which first brought the plight of Dr Aafia
Siddiqui to the world’s attention shortly after her kidnap in March 2003. The award-
winning, investigative journalist also co-produced the documentary In Search of
Prisoner 650 with film-maker Hassan al Banna Ghani which concluded that the Grey
Lady of Bagram was Dr Aafia Siddiqui

"The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping."
  - Izaak Walton