Lawyers for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui held a press conference in Brooklyn,
New York Monday to demand that their client, a 36-year-old mother
of three, be transferred immediately from federal jail to a hospital
for treatment of gunshot wounds inflicted by US personnel before
she was brought to the US to face trial.

Dr. Siddiqui, a neuroscientist educated at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, has been charged
with the attempted murder of US FBI agents and military personnel
after her reported arrest in Afghanistan’s southeastern province
of Ghazni.

According to the improbable account given by US authorities,
Siddiqui was detained last month by Afghan security personnel
who found lists of supposed US targets, bomb-making instructions
and jars of chemicals in her handbag. But then, when a team of
American soldiers and FBI agents came to claim her, the petite
and ailing woman managed to overpower both her Afghan and American
captors, wrestle away an automatic weapon and fire on them before
being shot herself.

The woman’s lawyers and family, however, dismiss the entire
story as a concoction and frame-up, charging that in reality she
has been held in secret US detention facilities and subjected
to physical and psychological torture and sexual abuse since her
disappearance—together with her three young children, who
are American citizens—from the streets of Karachi in March
2003.

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