Dr Aafia Siddiqui's Journey from Neuroscientist to America's Most Controversial Prisoner
How America's War on Terror Destroyed One Family Forever
In a sterile prison cell at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, sits a woman who has become one of the most controversial prisoners in America. Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a 53-year-old Pakistani neuroscientist, is serving an 86-year sentence, essentially a life term, for attempting to murder US soldiers in Afghanistan. She was convicted not of terrorism, but of allegedly grabbing an M4 rifle from a US Army warrant officer and firing at American personnel during her detention in 2008.
The prosecution painted a picture of a dangerous woman who, despite being 5'3" tall and weighing barely 100 pounds, somehow overpowered trained American soldiers and seized their weapon. Yet when investigators examined the evidence, they found something peculiar: no fingerprints on the weapon, no gunpowder residue on her hands or clothing, no bullets recovered from the scene, and no bullet holes in the walls where she allegedly fired. The only bullets found were those lodged in Dr Siddiqui's own abdomen, she was the only person shot that day.
This is not a story about terrorism charges, because none were ever filed. This is the story of what happened before that July day in Afghanistan, a story that begins with a simple taxi ride in Karachi and leads through the darkest corners of America's "War on Terror," where the line between justice and vengeance became fatally blurred.
The story begins not in a prison cell, but in the bustling port city of Karachi, Pakistan, where Aafia Siddiqui was born on 2 March 1972 to a family that embodied the intersection of faith and learning. Her father, Muhammad Salay Siddiqui, was a British-trained neurosurgeon; her mother, Ismet, was an Islamic teacher and social worker who would later serve in Pakistan's parliament. The youngest of three siblings, Aafia grew up in a household where devotional Islam coexisted harmoniously with a deep respect for science and technology.
From an early age, Aafia displayed the kind of intellectual brilliance that would define her trajectory. She excelled in her studies, avoiding the distractions that occupied her peers, no movies, novels, or television except for news. Her focus was laser-sharp: religion and academics. After completing her secondary education in Karachi, she set her sights on America, the land where her intellectual ambitions could flourish.
In 1990, at the age of 18, Aafia arrived in Houston, Texas, on a student visa, joining her brother Muhammad who was studying architecture. She enrolled at the University of Houston, where she distinguished herself as an outstanding freshman, her dedication earning her a full scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. At MIT, she continued to excel, winning the prestigious $5,000 Carroll L. Wilson Award in 1992 for her research proposal "Islamisation in Pakistan and its Effects on Women", a paper that demonstrated her early interest in the intersection of faith, politics, and social justice.
After graduating with honours from MIT, Aafia pursued graduate studies at Brandeis University, where she earned a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, a field that fascinated her with its exploration of how the human brain processes thought and emotion. Her professors remembered her as brilliant, dedicated, and deeply thoughtful about the ethical implications of her research.
During her time in Boston, Aafia married Amjad Khan, a Pakistani anesthesiologist, and together they started a family. She gave birth to son Ahmed in 1996, followed by daughter Maryam in 1998. By 2001, she was pregnant with her third child, Suleman. To those who knew her, Dr Aafia Siddiqui appeared to have everything, a loving family, a promising career, and the respect of her academic peers. She was known for her commitment to dawah (teaching and spreading the message of Islam) and her humanitarian work, particularly her efforts to aid victims of the Bosnian crisis in the 1990s.
Then came September 11, 2001, and everything changed. The terrorist attacks that morning would send shockwaves through American society, fundamentally altering how the nation viewed Muslims, particularly those who were educated, articulate, and had lived in the United States for extended periods. President George W. Bush's declaration that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" created a climate where nuance became a luxury the nation felt it could not afford.
For Dr Siddiqui, the post-9/11 environment transformed from one of academic opportunity to one of suspicion and surveillance. Her intellectual achievements, her commitment to Islam, and her years of residence in America, factors that had once been advantages, now made her a subject of interest to law enforcement agencies casting an increasingly wide net in their hunt for potential threats.
In 2002, after 12 fruitful years in the United States, Dr Siddiqui and her family made the decision to return to Pakistan. By this time, she had given birth to baby Suleman and was raising three young children. What should have been a simple relocation would prove to be a journey into a nightmare that continues to this day.
March 30, 2003. The date is seared into the memory of the Siddiqui family, the day their lives were torn apart. It was a Tuesday morning in Karachi, and Dr Aafia Siddiqui was preparing for what seemed like a routine trip. She planned to travel to Islamabad with her three children to visit her maternal uncle, a journey that required catching a flight from Karachi's airport.
At 28 years old, Dr Siddiqui was a devoted mother juggling the demands of academia with childcare. Six-year-old Ahmed was bright and curious, already showing signs of his mother's intellectual gifts. Four-year-old Maryam was a spirited child who brought joy to everyone around her. Baby Suleman, at just six months old, was still completely dependent on his mother for everything, feeding, comfort, and protection.
The family climbed into a taxi that Tuesday morning, their luggage packed for what they expected to be a brief visit with relatives. Dr Siddiqui held baby Suleman in her arms while Ahmed and Maryam sat beside her, probably excited about seeing their uncle and perhaps unaware that this would be the last normal moment of their childhood.
The taxi never reached the airport.
According to witness accounts and family testimonies, the vehicle was intercepted by unknown men. The family was forcibly removed from the taxi in a scene of violence and confusion that would haunt the survivors for decades. In the chaos of the abduction, baby Suleman was dropped, his tiny head striking the ground with a force that would prove fatal. Ahmed, just six years old, would later recall seeing his baby brother lying on the road, blood pooling around his small head.
The perpetrators separated the remaining family members into different vehicles. Dr Siddiqui was torn away from her surviving children, her desperate cries for Ahmed and Maryam echoing in the Karachi street before she was bundled into a car and driven away. It was the last time the family would be together.
The following day, as the Siddiqui family frantically tried to understand what had happened to their daughter and grandchildren, they received a visitor that would silence their questions for years to come. A mysterious man on a motorcycle appeared at their door, delivering a message that was as clear as it was terrifying: "If you ever want to see your daughter and grandchildren again, be quiet!"
The warning carried the unmistakable implication of government involvement. This was not a random kidnapping for ransom, this was something far more sinister. The family, already devastated by the disappearance of their loved ones, now faced the impossible choice between speaking out and potentially ensuring their permanent silence, or remaining quiet and hoping against hope that compliance might somehow bring their family home.
The timing of the abduction was no coincidence. Just days earlier, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, had been captured in Karachi. The arrest had triggered a wave of intelligence operations across Pakistan as American and Pakistani agencies sought to uncover al-Qaeda networks. Dr Siddiqui, who had no connection to terrorism but fit the profile of an educated Muslim with American experience, had somehow been swept up in this dragnet.
What the Siddiqui family could not have known at the time was that their daughter had become a commodity in a systematic programme of human trafficking disguised as counter-terrorism. Years later, in his autobiography "In the Line of Fire," Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf would reveal the shocking truth about his government's collaboration with American intelligence agencies.
"We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States," Musharraf boasted on the back cover of his book's English edition. "We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of 'not doing enough' in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan."
The use of the word "bounty" was telling, it reduced human beings to a price tag, transforming counter-terrorism operations into a lucrative business. According to multiple reports, the going rate was $5,000 per person, though some sources suggest amounts as high as $55,000 for high-value targets. Dr Siddiqui, with her American education and apparent connections to the Muslim community, would have been considered a particularly valuable catch.
Significantly, when Musharraf's autobiography was published in Urdu for Pakistani audiences, this damning admission was quietly removed. The bounty programme was something to boast about to American audiences but too shameful to admit to his own people.
Human rights organisations have documented how this system incentivised the capture of innocent people. Bounty hunters, including police officers and local informants, captured individuals "often apparently at random," according to Amnesty International, and sold them into US custody. The result was a pipeline of innocent people flowing into American detention facilities, where they would disappear into a legal black hole.
For five years, from 2003 to 2008, Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her children vanished from the face of the earth. The family received no word, no proof of life, no indication of where they might be or even whether they were alive. It was as if they had been erased from existence.
But they had not disappeared entirely. During these years, former detainees at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan began speaking of something that haunted them even more than their own suffering: the sound of a woman screaming. Night after night, prisoners would lie in their cells listening to the agonised cries echoing through the facility. The woman was known only by her prisoner number: 650. To the detainees, she became "the Grey Lady of Bagram”, a ghostly figure whose presence reminded them that the abuse they suffered was not the worst that was happening in that place.
Moazzam Begg, a British citizen who was held at Bagram for three years before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay and eventually released without charge, later confirmed: "I used to hear the sounds of a woman screaming." The anguish in those screams was unlike anything the male prisoners had heard before. "Of all the abuses [we witnessed], the presence of a woman and her humiliation and degradation were the most inflammatory to all the prisoners, they would never forget it."
Multiple former Bagram detainees have since identified photographs of Dr Aafia as the woman they glimpsed during their detention. They described seeing a frail female figure being moved between cells, her condition deteriorating visibly over the years of her confinement.
According to testimonies gathered by her current lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, and detailed in legal filings, Dr Siddiqui's years at Bagram were characterised by systematic torture that violated every principle of human rights and international law. The abuse was not random or spontaneous, it was calculated, methodical, and designed to break her psychologically as well as physically.
Physical torture included regular beatings severe enough to cause hearing loss. She was held in solitary confinement in cells maintained at piercingly cold temperatures for weeks at a time. The sensory deprivation and extreme conditions caused her hands and feet to swell to the point where she could not stand. Sexual assault was a regular feature of her detention, with multiple witnesses, including former detainee Binyam Mohammed, reporting that they saw several US soldiers gang rape her.
Perhaps even more devastating was the psychological torture designed to target her deepest vulnerabilities as a mother. Her captors would play recordings of children screaming, telling her they were her own children being tortured. They showed her photographs of what they claimed was baby Suleman lying in a pool of blood. They used her maternal instincts as weapons against her, exploiting her love for her children to inflict the maximum possible psychological damage.
The torture was not conducted by rogue operators but was part of a systematic programme. Documents later revealed through investigations showed that the mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram was routine, including "shackling them to the ceilings of their cells, depriving them of sleep, kicking and hitting them, sexually humiliating them and threatening them with guard dogs." The same techniques that would later be exposed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were being perfected at Bagram years earlier.
While Dr Siddiqui endured her ordeal at Bagram, her children were experiencing their own nightmare. The systematic destruction of the family was not an accident, it was a deliberate strategy to ensure that even if any of them survived, they would be forever changed.
Six-year-old Ahmed was taken to a juvenile detention facility where he was forced to assume a false identity. Guards told him his name was now "Ali" and that if he ever revealed his true identity, he would be killed. For years, this child. who should have been learning to read and play with friends, was instead learning to survive in an adult world of threats and violence. The psychological impact of forcing a young child to deny his own identity while living under constant threat of death cannot be overstated.
Four-year-old Maryam suffered a different but equally traumatic fate. She was taken to Afghanistan and forcibly adopted by a white American couple, likely CIA operatives working in the region. She was given a new name, "Fatima", and raised as if she were their biological child. Her adoptive parents completely severed her connection to her Pakistani heritage, her Islamic faith, and her true identity. For seven years, she lived as someone else's child, speaking English and Dari, with no memory of her real family or her life before the abduction.
Baby Suleman, the most vulnerable of the three, simply disappeared. To this day, neither Dr Siddiqui nor her family knows whether he died in that Karachi street on the day of the abduction or whether he died later. The uncertainty is perhaps the cruelest torture of all, a mother not knowing whether her baby is alive or dead, whether he suffered, whether he called for her in his final moments.
On July 16, 2008, after five years of captivity, Dr Siddiqui was unexpectedly released from Bagram. But this was not freedom, it was the beginning of what appears to have been an elaborate setup designed to provide a legal pretext for her permanent imprisonment or elimination.
At the gates of Bagram, she was handed a young boy of about eleven or twelve years old who had been given the name Ehsan Ali. This child would later prove to be her son Ahmed, now traumatised and speaking only English and Dari after years of forced identity suppression. Together, they were put on a bus to Ghazni province in Afghanistan with instructions to wait outside the city's main mosque for Maryam.
According to Clive Stafford Smith's investigation, Dr Siddiqui was accompanied by a Pakistani intelligence officer carrying a bag of documents that were intended to frame her in a fictitious terrorist plot. Ahmed had been dressed in an oversized jacket despite the summer heat, with the pockets stuffed with fruit to make him appear like a potential suicide bomber.
The setup becomes clear when viewed in context: Dr Siddiqui had become a political embarrassment. For five years, the US government had denied holding her, but former detainees were beginning to speak out about the woman they had heard screaming at Bagram. Her existence was becoming known to human rights organisations, and pressure was mounting for answers. Rather than admit to years of illegal detention and torture, it appears that a decision was made to eliminate the problem permanently.
Outside the Khalid Bin Walid Mosque in Ghazni, Dr Siddiqui waited with her son for a reunion that would never come. For nearly seven hours, this mother sat in the summer heat, her body weakened by years of torture, her mind focused on the possibility of seeing her daughter for the first time since that terrible day in Karachi.
As the hours stretched on, she attracted the attention of a local tailor who worked across from the mosque. This man, who spoke Urdu and could communicate with Dr Siddiqui, may have saved her life. When Afghan National Police arrived and prepared to shoot her on suspicion of being a suicide bomber, apparently responding to an anonymous tip, the tailor intervened. He stood between Dr Siddiqui and the AK-47-wielding officers, vouching for her innocence and telling them the caller was lying.
But the delay had served its purpose. Dr Siddiqui had been in public long enough to be identified and reported. The next phase of the operation could begin.
On July 17, 2008, Afghan police detained Dr Siddiqui on suspicion of planning an attack on the Governor of Ghazni. When they searched her, they allegedly found documents about weapons construction, references to a "mass casualty attack," and a list of New York City landmarks. They also claimed she carried various chemical substances in sealed bottles and jars.
Dr Siddiqui was taken to the local police station, where she spent the night not in a cell but in a back room separated from the adjoining office by nothing more than a flimsy curtain. This detail would prove crucial to what happened next.
The following morning, July 18, a team of Americans arrived to question her: two FBI agents and three US soldiers, including Army Warrant Officer John Pratt, Captain Robert Snyder, and an interpreter. What happened in that room over the next few minutes would determine the course of Dr Siddiqui's life for decades to come.
According to the prosecution's account, Dr Siddiqui somehow managed to grab Warrant Officer Pratt's M4 rifle, which he had allegedly left unsecured on the floor. Despite being shackled and weakened from years of imprisonment, this 5'3", 100-pound woman supposedly overpowered trained soldiers, removed the safety from an unfamiliar weapon, and fired two shots at the Americans before being shot in the abdomen and subdued.
When investigators examined the scene and the evidence, they found something remarkable: virtually nothing supported the prosecution's version of events. No fingerprints were found on the alleged weapon. No gunpowder residue was detected on Dr Siddiqui's hands or clothing. No bullets were recovered from the room. No bullet holes were found in the walls where she had allegedly fired.
Most tellingly, the holes in the police station wall that prosecutors claimed were made by Dr Siddiqui's shots were later proven to have existed before the incident. The only bullets found were those that had been fired into Dr Siddiqui herself.
A forensic metallurgist brought in by the defense testified that, based on the complete lack of physical evidence, he did not believe an M4 rifle had been fired in that room at all. He found it "implausible that someone could discharge an M-4 rifle in a room without bullet fragments or gunpowder residue being recovered by authorities."
Even more damning, the alleged murder weapon, the rifle Dr Siddiqui was supposed to have grabbed, mysteriously disappeared before the trial, along with the handbag that supposedly contained all the incriminating documents and chemical substances.
When Dr Siddiqui was shot, she was rushed to Bagram Air Base for emergency surgery. The medical records from her treatment revealed the extent of the physical trauma she had endured during her years of captivity. She had suffered partial loss of her intestine, clear evidence of severe internal injuries consistent with torture. Her hearing had been damaged, and she bore numerous scars and injuries that painted a picture of systematic physical abuse.
The medical evidence also raised questions about her mental state. A court psychiatrist initially found her hallucinating and unfit to stand trial, though this determination was later controversially retracted. The psychological impact of five years of torture, sexual assault, and forced separation from her children had left deep scars that would affect her for the rest of her life.
Despite her serious injuries, Dr Siddiqui was flown from Afghanistan to New York in a timeline that defied medical logic. According to the official story, she was captured in Afghanistan on July 17, 2008, and appeared in a US courtroom the following day. How American authorities managed to transport a woman suffering from two gunshot wounds to the abdomen halfway around the world in less than 24 hours remained unexplained.
On September 23, 2008, she was indicted on charges of assault and attempted murder of US soldiers. Notably absent from the charges were any terrorism-related offenses, despite years of claims that she was a dangerous al-Qaeda operative.
When Dr Siddiqui's trial began in January 2010, it became clear that this would not be a normal legal proceeding. Federal Judge Richard M. Berman, who presided over the case, demonstrated what observers characterised as open hostility toward the defendant from the very beginning. The judge had already exposed his "deep antipathy and hostility toward Aafia Siddiqui" before hearing the first word of evidence.
The prosecution's strategy was clear: they would focus exclusively on the events in Ghazni and ignore everything that had happened before. The five missing years from 2003 to 2008 were ruled off-limits for discussion. The judge refused to allow testimony about Dr Siddiqui's torture, her illegal detention, or the circumstances that had brought her to Afghanistan. The jury would hear nothing about Bagram, nothing about the bounty system, nothing about the death of her baby or the forced adoption of her children.
In this sanitised version of events, Dr Siddiqui appeared to be simply a dangerous woman who had inexplicably attacked American soldiers. The context that might have explained her condition, or that might have revealed the truth about what had happened to her, was systematically excluded from consideration.
Before the trial even began, Dr Siddiqui had been subjected to a relentless media campaign designed to prejudice potential jurors against her. American tabloids dubbed her "Lady al-Qaeda," creating an image of her as a mastermind terrorist despite the absence of any terrorism charges. The nickname stuck, ensuring that anyone who heard her name would associate her with terrorism before learning any facts about her case.
The prosecution presented six members of the American team who testified that Dr Siddiqui had grabbed the rifle and fired at them. However, under cross-examination, these witnesses contradicted themselves and each other so frequently that defence lawyers argued they should be charged with perjury. Three additional witnesses who had not directly observed the alleged shooting testified that they had heard M4 rifle shots, but their testimony was undermined by the complete absence of any physical evidence that such shots had been fired.
On February 3, 2010, after a 14-day trial, the jury found Dr Siddiqui guilty on all charges. The verdict came despite the overwhelming forensic evidence in her favour and the numerous contradictions in the prosecution's case. The intensive pre-trial propaganda campaign, combined with the post-9/11 climate of fear and suspicion, had created an environment where a fair trial was virtually impossible.
Seven months later, on September 23, 2010, Judge Berman sentenced Dr Siddiqui to 86 years in prisones, sentially a life sentence for a woman who was 38 years old at the time. In delivering the sentence, he ignored the complete absence of physical evidence supporting the charges and relied entirely on the testimony of witnesses whose stories had been thoroughly discredited.
When the sentence was announced, Dr Siddiqui denounced the trial as a sham and said an appeal would be "a waste of time. I appeal to God." Her words would prove prophetic, Judge Berman later officially closed her case to the appeals process, ensuring that she would have no meaningful opportunity to challenge her conviction.
The verdict sparked massive protests across Pakistan, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets demanding Dr Siddiqui's release. Protesters burned American flags and effigies of President Barack Obama, while chanting slogans denouncing US injustice. Graffiti reading "Free Dr. Aafia" appeared throughout the country, from major cities to remote rural areas.
The reaction was not limited to Pakistan. Human rights organisations around the world condemned the trial as a travesty of justice. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark described Dr Siddiqui's case as "the worst case of individual injustice I have ever witnessed." Legal experts pointed to the numerous violations of due process and international law that had characterised every aspect of her treatment.
Even within the United States, voices of dissent emerged. Some observers noted the disturbing parallels between Dr Siddiqui's treatment and the systematic abuses that had been exposed at other facilities like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Her case became a symbol of how the "War on Terror" had corrupted American values and institutions.
Dr Siddiqui was transferred to the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, a facility designated for female inmates requiring specialised medical and mental health care. However, rather than receiving the treatment she desperately needed, she found herself subject to continued abuse and neglect.
Unlike other prisoners, Dr Siddiqui does not enjoy normal visitation rights. Mail sent to her is routinely returned unopened. Requests for medical care are ignored or denied. She has been denied access to religious counselling, despite multiple requests for an imam to provide spiritual support. When Imam Omar Suleiman volunteered to visit her regularly, prison authorities created endless bureaucratic obstacles before finally denying the request without explanation.
The conditions of her confinement amount to continued torture. She is frequently held in solitary confinement for extended periods. When she has reported sexual assault by prison staff, she has been punished rather than protected, in violation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Her physical and mental health have deteriorated dramatically during her imprisonment.
In July 2021, Dr Siddiqui was violently attacked by another inmate who smashed a coffee mug filled with scalding liquid into her face. She was found curled in a foetal position, unable to get up, and had to be removed from her cell in a wheelchair. Rather than receiving protection, she was placed in administrative solitary confinement, effectively being punished for being the victim of an assault.
While Dr Siddiqui languished in prison, efforts continued to locate and recover her surviving children. Ahmed was released to Dr Siddiqui's sister, Dr Fowzia Siddiqui, shortly after the Ghazni incident in 2008. However, the boy who returned was not the same child who had been taken five years earlier. He could speak only English and Dari, having been forced to forget his native Urdu. The psychological trauma of his imprisonment and forced identity change had left deep scars that would require years of healing.
Maryam's recovery was more complex. In April 2010, she mysteriously appeared outside her grandmother's house in Karachi, wearing a collar with the family's address. DNA tests confirmed her identity, but the girl who returned was essentially a stranger to her own family. She could speak only English and Dari and had no memory of her life before the abduction. Her forced adoption had successfully erased her Pakistani identity and Islamic faith, replacing them with a completely fabricated history.
The reunion was bittersweet. Dr Fowzia Siddiqui, a Harvard-trained neurologist, took on the responsibility of raising her nephew and niece while fighting for her sister's freedom. She helped them gradually reconnect with their Pakistani heritage and Islamic faith, but the damage done during their formative years could never be completely undone.
Baby Suleman was never found. To this day, neither Dr Siddiqui nor her family knows whether he died in that Karachi street in 2003 or whether he survived longer before ultimately perishing. The uncertainty continues to torment his mother, who sometimes sets aside food for her children as she remembers them, ages six, four, and six months, her brilliant mind locked in a moment of trauma from more than two decades ago.
Dr Fowzia Siddiqui has become the public face of the campaign for her sister's freedom. A neurologist who trained at Harvard and worked at Johns Hopkins University, she gave up her promising medical career to dedicate her life to seeking justice for Aafia. For over twenty years, she has travelled the world, spoken at conferences, met with government officials, and raised awareness about her sister's case.
The personal cost has been enormous. Dr Fowzia has faced threats and intimidation for her advocacy work. She has been warned to abandon her sister and focus on her own life. The emotional toll of visiting Aafia in prison, seeing her deteriorated condition, and then having to leave her behind has been devastating. "I told the court if I see her once, I can't just leave her and come back and get along with my life. It's torture. It's not humanly possible. I need her back," she has said.
In May 2023, Dr Fowzia was finally allowed to visit her sister in prison for the first time in years. What she found was heartbreaking: "My sister was a living corpse, she looked drained and scalded, and in so much pain." Aafia's front teeth had been knocked out in a prison attack, and she suffered from hearing loss due to a severe head injury. The brilliant neuroscientist who had once commanded respect at MIT and Brandeis was barely recognisable.
In 2010, the release of classified US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks provided crucial evidence supporting the family's claims about Dr Siddiqui's secret detention. The cables included memos from the US Embassy in Islamabad asking other government departments whether Aafia had been in secret custody. One cable stated: "Bagram officials have assured us that they have not been holding Siddiqui for the last four years, as has been alleged."
The very existence of these inquiries proved that US officials were well aware of the allegations and were seeking to coordinate their denials. If Dr Siddiqui had truly been at liberty from 2003 to 2008, as the government claimed, there would have been no need for such internal communications.
Despite the closure of her appeals, Dr Siddiqui's legal team has continued to seek justice through other avenues. In September 2024, her lawyer Clive Stafford Smith filed a comprehensive clemency petition with President Joe Biden. The 76,000-word document detailed the full scope of the injustices in her case: her innocence of the charges, the CIA's abduction of her children, the evidence of torture in US custody, and the ongoing sexual abuse she faces in prison.
The petition included new evidence gathered from Afghanistan following the Taliban's return to power. For the first time since 2003, Stafford Smith was able to travel to Bagram and interview former detainees who had been Dr Siddiqui's cellmates. Their testimonies provided firsthand accounts of the torture and abuse she had endured, corroborating the family's claims about her treatment.
As news of the clemency petition spread, a massive international campaign emerged to pressure President Biden to grant Dr Siddiqui's release. The petition on Change.org attracted over 1.5 million signatures, making it one of the most signed online petitions in history. Support came from prominent religious leaders, human rights activists, politicians, and ordinary citizens around the world who were moved by her story.
The campaign highlighted the broader implications of Dr Siddiqui's case. As one petition stated: "Her case is one of the tragic remnants of the 'War on Terror,' a period marked by injustices that continue to strain U.S. relations with the global Muslim community."
The Pakistani government also increased its diplomatic efforts. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif wrote directly to President Biden, urging clemency on humanitarian grounds due to Dr Siddiqui's deteriorating health. A Pakistani delegation, including senators and medical professionals, travelled to Washington to advocate for her release and met with US lawmakers to explore legal avenues for her freedom.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, the global pressure, and the 1.5 million signatures calling for justice, President Biden chose to maintain the injustice. On January 20, 2025, in one of his final acts as president, Biden officially denied clemency to Dr Aafia Siddiqui. The denial came without any substantive response to the evidence presented in the clemency petition.
The decision was particularly cruel given its timing. As Donald Trump was being inaugurated as the 47th president, Biden was ensuring that Dr Siddiqui would remain imprisoned, likely for the rest of her life. The president who had campaigned on restoring American values and human rights chose to perpetuate one of the most egregious injustices of the post-9/11 era.
Clive Stafford Smith's response captured the absurdity of the situation: "Incompetent as well as inhuman: they can't get anything right: Biden's website still says Aafia's clemency is still pending & they sent the denial to an address I never gave them that I left 4 years ago..."
The denial of clemency sparked outrage in Pakistan's courts. On January 25, 2025, the Islamabad High Court was informed of Biden's decision. Justice Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan, presiding over the case, expressed his frustration with both the American and Pakistani governments' handling of the situation. "The US is showing us our worth," he remarked, highlighting the broader implications for US-Pakistan relations.
The judge also criticised the Biden administration's hypocrisy, drawing a comparison between Biden's pardoning of his own son and the denial of clemency for Dr Siddiqui. The contrast was stark: Biden had used his presidential powers to protect his family member from prosecution while refusing to correct a clear miscarriage of justice affecting a foreign national.
Today, as this article is written in July 2025, Dr Aafia Siddiqui remains in her Texas prison cell under the Trump administration. Over 22 years have passed since that March day in Karachi when a mother and her three children were torn from their lives and thrust into the machinery of America