Yvonne Ridley – In Search of Dr Aafia Siddiqui A Tale #4
AI: Summary ©
A woman named Yvonne Ridley was found missing in Bagram, Pakistan. The family of the woman had been trying to convince the Americans to keep her in custody, but they were not convinced. After speaking to various people, the family discovered that Yvonne had been shot and killed by a group of American soldiers. The woman is believed to be a journalist and a woman who was a journalist and a woman who was a journalist and a woman who was a journalist and a woman who was a journalist and a woman who was a journalist and a woman.
AI: Summary ©
Afia is of no value to the Americans.
They would let her go tomorrow like that.
She was going to Islamabad to meet with
the Senate chairman and people about her curriculum
and she never got to Islamabad.
This was in March 2003.
Going out to Guantanamo and filming there for
four days, I kept hearing about stories about
this woman who was held in Bagram.
The Americans said there's no woman in Bagram.
They totally denied it.
And I wasn't convinced because there were too
many people who had seen and gave descriptions
of this woman being held in Bagram.
So I started to look into who it
could be and Afia Siddiqui's name came into
it.
I then approached Imran Khan and Imran, right
from the very beginning, right from the very
first day that Afia disappeared, had been alerted
that this woman has disappeared.
Her uncle, who was supposed to pick her
up, said she hasn't turned up.
She was due here with the three children.
She hasn't come.
I fear she's been kidnapped.
But then the family, for whatever reason, the
uncle totally flipped on the story and backtracked
and said, it's OK, we don't want any
news.
I also recruited the help of Lord Nasir
Ahmed.
And he wrote a very stern letter to
the Americans saying, who is this woman in
Bagram?
We know that her prison number is 650.
And up until that point, the Americans had
been saying, Yvonne Ridley is a fantasist.
This woman doesn't exist.
She's a journalist who was making things up.
And suddenly they flipped and said, yeah, we
did have this woman.
There was a woman who was prisoner 650
and she's no longer in Bagram.
And they wouldn't say anything more.
I went the length and breadth of Pakistan
with the help of Jamat Islami, with the
help of Imran Khan, and with the help
of Lord Nasir Ahmed.
And nobody came forward publicly on the record
to say who the woman was in Bagram,
other than people behind the scenes came to
me and said, yes, it's Afia Siddiqui.
I then took photographs of Afia before and
two prisoners and ex-detainees who had been
in Bagram, who'd subsequently gone to Guantanamo.
And they said, yes, that's the woman.
I was in Bagram.
We used to have one lady prisoner and
whose presence in the jail was heartbreaking for
all of us when she was pushed backward
in power by the American soldiers.
Then I went back into Afghanistan because we'd
heard that she had emerged and there'd been
a shootout.
And I went to Goddard's police station where
the shooting had taken place.
We did this filming and we spoke to
people and we got enough evidence to build
a case that the woman in Bagram had
been Afia Siddiqui and the woman who was
shot in the police station had been in
Bagram.
It all tied in.
And we gave the details to her legal
team in America free of charge.
They were being paid millions by the Pakistan
government to defend Afia.
And they did a terrible job.
I would have done a better job had
I gone into the courtroom myself.
We rely so much on science these days
in criminal investigations.
And according to the American soldiers who shot
Afia, they said that she grabbed their gun
and shot at them.
There was no GCI or gunshot residue found
on Afia's clothing.
No gunshot residue on her hands.
There was nothing to say that she had
fired a gun.
What our filming did prove was that the
Americans had panicked on seeing Afia and had
just started firing their guns crazily and retreated
from the cell where she was being held.
But none of that was shown in the
court case.
The court case was...
Well, it wasn't justice.
I have since spoken to American soldiers who
went through the same training.
And these particular soldiers that I've been speaking
to, they have no love for Muslims.
They...
I would say they are Trump supporters.
And we know what Donald Trump thinks of
Muslims.
And they have said...
And they are furious at claims that this
tiny little Pakistani woman sprung out, grabbed a
gun from an American soldier and started shooting.
They insist that would never, ever, ever, ever
happen.
Because their training is such that an American
soldier never, ever puts his gun down when
he's on active duty, other than to reload
or clean it.
And the thought of any of them abandoning
their weapon in a time of heightened tension
is just impossible.
I was days away from getting her released
in exchange for the Taliban soldier, American soldier
that the Taliban held, Bowe Bergdahl.
I was days away from getting her released
to the point where we knew where the
Chinook helicopter would come and drop her down
and take up Bowe Bergdahl.
And it was all planned.
We were days away from getting her released
and the plans collapsed.
What I have learned is that Afia is
of no value to the Americans.
They would let her go tomorrow like that.