POSTCARD USA: The Flying Four —Khalid Hasan
There must be something in the air today.Like Amina Jilani, Khalid Hasan is in bristling form also.t
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The delegation of four lawmakers, who are innocent of having drafted any law in living memory, led by Mushahid Hussain, landed here to meet Aafia Siddiqui, canonised in life as the Pakistani Joan of Arc. They are also to make a side trip to Guantanamo, where all they will be able to meet will be lazy iguanas, banana rats, slithering snakes and snarling prison guards.
What message are the four legislators sending to the world by flying into that Cuban strip that has been under American control since 1903? Weeks before the Flying Four arrived, US authorities conveyed to the Embassy of Pakistan in writing that it will not be possible to meet the prisoners. Why then was the visit not called off, the Pakistani taxpayer at whose expense the Flying Four are travelling would want to be told.
As for Aafia Siddiqui, whom the Flying Four have already met, by travelling all the way from Pakistan to meet her, the Pakistani parliament, not to speak of the government, have already passed judgement on a case yet to be heard in court. Thus Ms Siddiqui has been officially declared innocent of all charges, those made and those that may be in the offing.
In the 2 hours and 45 minutes that the Flying Four spent with her, they were unable to get much out of her. She was unwilling or unable to answer a single question that could have established a coherent sequence of events and lifted the veil from what continues to remain hidden and unexplained.
Back in Pakistan, her family has done likewise. Why did the family not lodge a missing person report with the police for five long years when Ms Siddiqui with her three children is said to have disappeared on her way from home to Karachi airport for a flight to Islamabad? Why did the father of the three children, from whom she was by then divorced, not report to the police that his three children were missing? There are other questions that are equally mystifying but few of our people have much of an interest in digging for the truth. It is much easier to have opinions.
[Khalid, Afia's ex - the father of her three children is in Guantanamo- t]
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Mushahid Hussain, who first announced that he would hold a press conference after meeting Ms Siddiqui, changed his mind after meeting her. However, he was on the blower to a reporter in Islamabad who duly put in his paper what he had been told. So at least the heroics of the “leader of the parliamentary delegation” were brought home to readers back home as the power went on the blink for the umpteenth time that day.
It is also my unhappy duty to report that some of the lawmakers are here with their lady wives. And why not? This is fall, the best time of year in this part of the world. The country is in recession and the stores desperate to get rid of their fall collections and stock up for Christmas and winter. As such huge discounts are being offered on all wares.
Nothing, just nothing, I can state from experience, has ever kept a Pakistani visitor to the West from the stores. When I was living in London in the 1980s, so many times had I had to take visitors from Pakistan to Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street that the sales girls had come to know me by face. I was never asked by anyone to take him to the British Museum or the Victoria and Albert or the National Art Gallery. I can lay it 10 to 1 that none of the Flying Four has been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the Guggenheim or even to a Broadway play.
POSTCARD USA: The Flying Four —Khalid Hasan
***
The delegation of four lawmakers, who are innocent of having drafted any law in living memory, led by Mushahid Hussain, landed here to meet Aafia Siddiqui, canonised in life as the Pakistani Joan of Arc. They are also to make a side trip to Guantanamo, where all they will be able to meet will be lazy iguanas, banana rats, slithering snakes and snarling prison guards.
What message are the four legislators sending to the world by flying into that Cuban strip that has been under American control since 1903? Weeks before the Flying Four arrived, US authorities conveyed to the Embassy of Pakistan in writing that it will not be possible to meet the prisoners. Why then was the visit not called off, the Pakistani taxpayer at whose expense the Flying Four are travelling would want to be told.
As for Aafia Siddiqui, whom the Flying Four have already met, by travelling all the way from Pakistan to meet her, the Pakistani parliament, not to speak of the government, have already passed judgement on a case yet to be heard in court. Thus Ms Siddiqui has been officially declared innocent of all charges, those made and those that may be in the offing.
In the 2 hours and 45 minutes that the Flying Four spent with her, they were unable to get much out of her. She was unwilling or unable to answer a single question that could have established a coherent sequence of events and lifted the veil from what continues to remain hidden and unexplained.
Back in Pakistan, her family has done likewise. Why did the family not lodge a missing person report with the police for five long years when Ms Siddiqui with her three children is said to have disappeared on her way from home to Karachi airport for a flight to Islamabad? Why did the father of the three children, from whom she was by then divorced, not report to the police that his three children were missing? There are other questions that are equally mystifying but few of our people have much of an interest in digging for the truth. It is much easier to have opinions.
[Khalid, Afia's ex - the father of her three children is in Guantanamo- t]
***
Mushahid Hussain, who first announced that he would hold a press conference after meeting Ms Siddiqui, changed his mind after meeting her. However, he was on the blower to a reporter in Islamabad who duly put in his paper what he had been told. So at least the heroics of the “leader of the parliamentary delegation” were brought home to readers back home as the power went on the blink for the umpteenth time that day.
It is also my unhappy duty to report that some of the lawmakers are here with their lady wives. And why not? This is fall, the best time of year in this part of the world. The country is in recession and the stores desperate to get rid of their fall collections and stock up for Christmas and winter. As such huge discounts are being offered on all wares.
Nothing, just nothing, I can state from experience, has ever kept a Pakistani visitor to the West from the stores. When I was living in London in the 1980s, so many times had I had to take visitors from Pakistan to Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street that the sales girls had come to know me by face. I was never asked by anyone to take him to the British Museum or the Victoria and Albert or the National Art Gallery. I can lay it 10 to 1 that none of the Flying Four has been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the Guggenheim or even to a Broadway play.
POSTCARD USA: The Flying Four —Khalid Hasan
posted by temporal at 10/13/2008
2 Comments:
At least Khalid still has a working brain. This whole thing is part of the gravy train that's been going for a long time.
And that Afia? She appears to be a nutcase and JI is going to make her a hero. US would let her go too soon.
yes, there are other reports that indicate she is not all there up there!
but she wasn't like that
her incarceration and torture may have contributed to it
time will tell
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