LAHORE - Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s sister Dr Fauzia Siddiqui is not happy with the government’s expected step of swapping her sister with Dr Shakeel Afridi, though she wants her back home as soon as possible.
In an interview with The Nation, she pleaded that it would not be fair to exchange an innocent person (Dr Aafia) with a criminal (Dr Shakeel). Fauzia insisted her sister be brought back without any swap for being innocent.
She appealed to the government to make sincere efforts to pave the way for Dr Aafia’s return. “Please don’t give us a lollypop just like the previous government did,” she said in an emotional tone.
Fauzia, however, lauded the PPP government for another reason. “The top hierarchy in the previous government immediately respond to my phone calls and SMS whenever I wanted to talk to them on Dr Aafia’s issue”, she said.
Citing her conversation with then Pakistan Ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, she said he had once told her to get a bedroom ready for Dr Aafia as she would be back in Pakistan within three days. But this did not happen, she complained. She said the previous government had also offered to take her to the US for a meeting with Aafia.
“But I insisted that then Interior Minister Rehman Malik should also travel to the US along with our family. And the offer could never be materialised,” she disclosed.
To a query, she said Dr Aafia had been kept in solitary confinement and even her lawyer had a limited access to her. Asked when it was last time she talked to her sister, Fauzia said it was in July this year.
Answering another query, she said Aafia was neither an American national nor she ever applied for a green card.
“Had she been a US national she would not have been sentenced with 86-year imprisonment, as the punishment has never been awarded to any one before”, Fauzia argued.
She said she might move the court against the US claim that Aafia had American nationality.
She complained that under the Vienna Convention, the Pakistan Embassy officials had legal right to visit Aafia frequently in jail and also provide her food. But, unfortunately, this is not being done, she lamented.