Yvonne Ridley – In Search of Dr Aafia Siddiqui A Tale #4

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.