Massive anti-US protests held in Karachi

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets of Karachi in support of Afia Siddiqui, the Pakistani scientist serving an 86-year jail term in the US.

Siddiqui’s supporters have launched a freedom campaign, demanding her immediate release from US custody. Campaign organizers say they will continue pressuring Islamabad until she is freed.

“Dr. Aafia, daughter of the nation, could be brought home within few hours if the government takes some serious measures,” the English-language Daily Times newspaper quoted Aafia Siddiqui’s sister, Fouzia, as saying.

Protesters chanted anti-US slogans and strongly criticized the US justice system for its handling of the case.

There have been numerous rallies in the country over Siddiqui’s case and her release has become a major national issue in Pakistan with protesters saying that the scientist’s trial in the US was a complete mockery of the legal process.

Siddiqui is being held at a prison in Carswell, Texas, described by her family members as one of the most notorious prisons in the world.

The Pakistani woman vanished in Karachi on March 30, 2003. It was reported in local newspapers the next day that she had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.

US officials claim Siddiqui was seized on July 17, 2008 by Afghan security forces in Ghazni Province and claim that documents, including formulas for explosives and chemical weapons, were found in her handbag.

US officials also accuse her of grabbing a US warrant officer’s M4 rifle and firing two shots at FBI agents and military personnel during interrogation. While she missed, the warrant officer in question fired back, hitting her in the torso.

Human rights organizations, however, have cast doubt on the accuracy of the US account of the event.

Many political activists believe that Siddiqui was Prisoner 650 of the US detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, where they say she was tortured for five years. US authorities later announced that they had found her in Afghanistan.

The human rights organizations have frequently slammed the US and the UK for helping Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in abducting more than 500 terror suspects in Pakistan and keeping them in secret prisons during the presidency of General Pervez Musharraf.