Andy Worthington

On September 12, I was one of several speakers — including Lord Ahmed, Victoria Brittain, Asim Qureshi and Moazzam Begg — invited to speak at a Cageprisoners protest outside the US embassy, to demand justice for Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, abducted with her children in 2003, whose whereabouts were unaccounted for until this summer, when she reportedly surfaced in Afghanistan, was wounded in a gunfight and was spirited way to the United States to be charged in connection with terrorism. I can’t even begin here to discuss the horror of Aafia’s case, her long detention (denied by all parties), and the bizarre story about her capture in Afghanistan, and I recommend readers to visit this page on the Cageprisoners’ website to discover more and to read this article by Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch (and then to see here for the trail of tortured intelligence that leads from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Majid Khan to Aafia).

I’m pleased to report, however, that the event was a success, as several hundred people turned up, some from far-flung locations around the country, and many who had not, to date, attended any other protests against the excesses of the “War on Terror.” I was happy to provide those attending with some background to the stories of “extraordinary rendition” that underpin the “War on Terror,” and to talk about the US prison in Bagram (in many ways, Guantánamo’s less accountable mirror prison). I can only hope that more people are drawn to the cause (which seems to be one of the most disturbing cases in the whole of the United States’ flight from the law over the last seven years), and that Moazzam’s heartfelt plea for more engagement from the British Pakistani community bears fruit.