Ep.102 - Dr Aafia Siddiqui - Why the US Don't Want Her Released with Clive Stafford Smith
Although the war on terror is now a distant memory to many Americans, it’s horrible residue remains. The incarceration of Aafia Siddiqui, a brilliant academic and mother of three, has become a symbol of its excesses, of which there were many. She languishes in prison, serving an 86-year sentence for an offence that looks barely credible, the attempted murder of two US officials in Afghanistan in 2008. Her whereabouts before that date remain murky, and so does the welfare of her youngest son Suleman – who has not been seen since her detention in 2003.
To help us unpick the facts, we have invited Aafias lawyer Clive Stafford Smith to shed light on what happened to Aafia and her children. Clive has helped secure the release of 86 prisoners from Guantánamo Bay and still acts for the remaining numbers. Since the early days of the War on Terror, he has worked tirelessly to force the Americans and other Western powers to adhere to the rule of law. He has sought to uncover the secret prisons and ghost prisoners that stain the reputation of powerful states – who presented their wars in benevolent terms.
Clive has set up a crowdfunding page for a monthly standing order/debit for Aafia; this is to pay for a young Pakistani researcher to help on the case and to fund the trips to the US etc. Use - https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/freea...
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Transcript
Dr Aafia Siddiqui - Why the US Don't Want Her Released with Clive Stafford Smith
Please check the transcript against the programme for accuracy' as well as the title of the podcast
I very much underestimated what had gone on here, because I've represented a lot of people, and I'm really quite ashamed as an American that my country has tortured so many people, I've seen a lot of traumatized people, but there's no one in all of the Guantanamo Bay trauma who's been through what Aafia is been through.
To many Americans The War on Terror is now a distant memory, it's horrible residue remains the incarceration of Aafia Siddiqui a brilliant academic, and mother of three has become a symbol of its excesses of which there are many. She languishes in prison serving an 86-year sentence for an offense that barely looks credible, the attempted murder of two U.S officials in Afghanistan in 2008. Her whereabouts before that date remain remained murky, and so does the welfare of her younger son Suleiman who has not been seen since her detention in 2003.
To help us unpick the facts, I have invited Aafia's lawyer Clive Stafford Smith to shed light on what happened to Aafia and her children. Clive has helped secure the release of 86 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, and still acts for the remaining numbers since the early days of The War on Terror he has worked tirelessly to force the Americans, and other Western powers to adhere to the rule of law he has sought to uncover the secret prisons and ghost prisoners that stained the reputation of powerful states, who presented their wars in benevolent terms. Clive Stafford Smith, welcome to The Thinking Muslim it's great to have you with us.
Jalal thank you, it's a great pleasure to be here. Well, thank you for coming along today, and really Aafia, the subject of Aafia is in particular, I think, a subject that resonates with large numbers of Muslims, and many of my viewers are from Pakistan, in particular in Pakistan, as you as you know, the subject of Aafia remains I think a a real sword, a real problem for… You know what's extraordinary about it really, is if you want to see a dissonance, and let let me set you straight it's not The War on Terror it's what um the comedian Borat called The War of Terror, and I'm afraid that's what it's been, and I speak as an American when I say that. But of all the different things in The War of Terror, yes, um, the Aafia Siddiqui's case I think is the one that most illustrates the total dissonance between the West, and um you know many Muslim people, because you're in Pakistan there is no one more famous, I… You know, I posit that yeah Imran Khan is hardly more famous than Aafia Siddiqui in Pakistan. Whereas if you go to America, where she's held, you'll never find a single person outside the Muslim Community who's ever heard of her. And so, it's just one of these things that is, as you said there's a good word a sword, but it's a sword that the doctor who could lance it the Americans hasn't even noticed.
So let's go back to the very beginning give me some background on Aafia, many of my viewers would not necessarily have followed the Aafia case, especially the younger ones um… Tell me about Dr Aafia and her her abduction or prior to her abduction in 2003.
Well of course one of the things that happens in all the prisoners that I've represented over the years is they begin to get only known as you know a terrorist suspect uh, and all this stuff is said about them, much of that which said about Aafia is demonstrable nonsense, but that's all anyone ever talks about, and what they tend to forget is the human being underneath, and Aafia along with her whole family I mean they're a most remarkable group of people. Um Aafia was the youngest, so I totally empathize I've got an older sister and an older brother so I'm on Aafia’s side yes um, but she was the third very brilliant child in the family. First, is her older brother who's a great architect who's designed lots and lots of buildings, including most of the mosques in Houston and Texas; then there's her sister who I've worked with a lot, now Fauzia yes who's totally brilliant woman I mean she went to Harvard, she got a medical degree she was then the head of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University. Very very brilliant woman, and I I'll say this I'll say it several times probably if you let me if I'm ever in trouble, I want Fauzia as my sister, and she's not just brilliant she's totally formidable right; and then you have Aafia who is the youngest um, and Aafia also went to MIT, worked closely with Noam Chomsky, was involved very deeply in education and that was her big thing, and again she was another brilliant person who you know got a doctorate and all the rest of it. And had a gilded career ahead of her; she had a very troubled first marriage you know, I'm perfectly willing to to detail. I probably won't go into all the details, but her husband was abusive um and so just before all of these things happened she was divorcing him. They had three kids you know the oldest was Ahmed age five, the the middle kid was was Maryam, then age three; and then Suleiman the little baby, and Aafia was looking to both work in Pakistan on education, but also she was thinking because she was now going to have to look after her whole family by herself, because I'm afraid her husband was pretty nerved well um that she would then go perhaps back to America, and get a job there that was well paid so she could bring up all these three kids, and you know as 2003 rolled around that's where she was her dad had just died somewhat attributed to her husband. And so, you know they went through the period of grief after that, and then here we are in 2003.
So, in 2003 Aafia suggests she was picked up in Islamabad and taken to an undisclosed location.
Well let me tell you the full story, please, because this is this is the key to all of this, and you know I confess that when Fauzia bullied me into getting involved in this as only Fauzia can, I very much underestimated what had gone on here, because I've represented a lot of people I'm really quite ashamed as an American that my country has tortured so many people. I've seen a lot of traumatized people, but there's no one in all of the Guantanamo Bay trauma who's been through what Aafia has been through, and anyone who has children knows this or even anyone who has parents, because Aafia was taking a taxi to the Karachi Airport in 2003, and they're going to fly up to Islamabad where she's going to meet with the Education Ministry about ideas she had for Pakistan, she's in a deep argument with Ahmed, her son, because at age five he was a big fan of Thomas the Tank Engine, and he didn't want to go by plane he wanted to go by train, and that was the subject of the debate. She feels a little guilty that she took a bit of a shortcut in the taxi to the airport, that was the more dangerous route, but goodness knows you know she couldn't have escaped what happened, because you know what was happening to so many people back then. I didn't know this 20 years ago, but we as Americans were offering huge amounts of money for people, with Aafia it was reputedly about fifty-five thousand dollars was paid to Musharraf’s people to abduct her and turn her over to the Americans. Now this is where her case diverges from everyone else right, because in the car I had three children the goons surround surround the car with a bunch of their cars. They reach and grab you know at the little boy Ahmed, and the little girl Maryam out of the car screaming. Um Aafia has the little baby in her arms, Ahmed has described, and this is age five, and it's you know really hard for him to think about this sort of stuff that he and Maryam were in this other car and were looking through the back window when it seemed that Suleiman fell and was on the ground, um you know with blood around. Now, you know honestly, I don't think that description necessarily holds water, um but it does reflect as the trauma that he's been through, but you know perhaps that's when Suleiman was badly injured but perhaps not and you know this is what's worse for the family actually with with respect to Suleiman. He would be coming up to his 21st birthday, and they don't know whether he's dead or alive. Now that's a terrible crime and a terrible trauma for Aafia to have witnessed. But actually got much worse I mean I cannot fathom what my country, the United States thought what they were doing because they took Ahmed, age five, as you well know it's a thousand kilometers from Karachi to Kabul yes. They took him to Kabul, they put him in a juvenile prison in Afghanistan as a five-year-old. They told them his name was no longer Ahmed Siddiqui it was Ali, and if he ever said it was Siddiqui they'd kill him and they left him in this awful prison for five years and he would have been there basically forever but for Fouzia. Then, with Maryam they take her, little girl age three, instead of doing what you know if you're going to go around kidnapping people which is not top of my list of things one should do on a on a Monday morning um then you give the kids back to the family you don't do what they did, but instead they took Maryam again all the way to Afghanistan, they forcibly adopt her into a family of Americans a guy called Josh and a woman called Natalie who I really want to talk to.
You haven't met them yet?
No I haven't yet no goodness knows it's all secret but I'm hoping that they'll come forward at some point and we'll be able to talk to him yeah. Because what are we doing doing this to this little girl she spends the next five years in um you know living with strangers, and would still be there but for Fauzia, again and you know then we take off here, and you know one of the unique things but by no means the the biggest after all these other stuff is that she's really the only woman who went through the whole rendition to torture program. She's taken to Bagram Air Force Base outside Kabul where she's tortured for five years. I'm gonna see if that's not unspeakable enough and I first heard about this from Moazzam Begg, who I represented, that was the first person I represented in Guantanamo, and Moazzam was there in Bagram, um and he heard this woman screaming as we sit in Moazzam is Bagram, and I've asked him to take pictures of everything he saw on a videotape to reconstruct what happened to Aafia, because she's gone through all of this and oh my goodness poor woman. And it goes all downhill from there let's face it.
So, can you tell me about the role of Pakistan in the rendition of Aafia and the transfer to the Americans.
So, it's not clear if the Americans were actually there for the abduction or not right, but this was happening all over when I first to get mad I thought I had to represent a bunch of people who really were up to bad stuff. And when I got down there in 2004, I had a hard time finding an honest-to-goodness terrorist yeah um. And, it turned out it was all about this money thing, and a bounty, bounties.
And so Aafia was on some sort of list.
She, the Americans just would offer bounties, right and there wasn't necessarily a list, it was a money that was being offered to turn over people and you know let me give you this example: um let's say it's you and we're back in 2001, 2002. I offer you what is for the local people the equivalent there in London of let's say a quarter of a million dollars a lot of money, yeah so I'm offering you that to snitch on someone who you don't know who you think's probably a bad dude, and you're gonna get a quarter of a million dollars you're gonna do it? Yeah, very possibly I can imagine a poor person deciding to make that decision, but there was a what can I say that what really happened was sort of interesting, because all of this is not me saying it, really. Because ultimately in the end President Musharraf wrote his book in the line of fire, okay which I strongly advise you not to put on your goat shelf is really bad book. No, but I think it's page 234 of the paperback edition that I read, yeah, he boasts that more than half of the Guantanamo prisoners were sold to the Americans for bounties which we the officials got the money he said. Now, the Americans were pissed off about that, because not because they were paying bounties yeah that was true. But, because actually the money wasn't meant to go to corrupt military officers, it was meant to go to citizens, yeah, but that's what was happening and that's what happened to Aafia.
There is a claim by the Americans, but between 2003-2008, Aafia was not in prison she was not held at in as a ghost prisoner in Bagram, but she actually was moving from house to house in Pakistan and Afghanistan and even Iran. I mean how do you respond to that claim?
I'm sorry to say this on your on your recording, but we have a legal term for that and it's total [ __ ] right um. Look, we know she was there we got the records of the prisoners who are in Afghanistan, in Bagram, and we've got all sorts of witnesses to it, and I don't know if the US has ever made a official statement saying she was doing that, because they just don't, you know. They tend just not to say anything and then gossip comes out there's lots of gossip about that, I read a lot about it, yeah it is nonsense right. And she was in Bagram the whole time you know going through pretty unspeakable stuff. And then…
You know what happened to her in Bagram?
Well, I mean we know a fair amount of it and I've talked to her. Now you know with all of these things I'm always lost to go into too much detail until I figured out everything else that we know, because I don't want to re-traumatize this poor woman any more than she is traumatized. But no we know again went on in Bagram just as we know, what went on and all the other prisons I've represented scores of people who went through what she went through. And the US government always lies about it, right, but you know I'm telling you it's a lie what we did was torture pure and simple. And, but the proof of the pudding is we let it go right? So for all this nonsense that they go on about about Aafia, and we can talk about the allegations I'd love to clear some of them up. I mean people say she was American, people say she was married to all sorts of al-Qaeda senior peoples, total nonsense, right. Um, but one thing that is absolutely clear is that after abusing her for five years they let her go, now that doesn't happen if they think she's a bad person.
So she was released in 2008, and she finds herself in Ghazni province in Afghanistan, um you say she was released because they couldn't find anything on her. But what happens next because…
Can I, can I just interrupt that I hate to do this, yeah, but I think it's really important in the meantime to understand what happened to the kids. because that sets it in perspective. So Fowzia who is the aunt of the kids is desperate both to find her sister, and desperate also to to find her two nephews, and niece. And so she just goes to the ends of the Earth on this and she contacts what everyone the Red Cross and everyone like that. She gives them pictures and after almost five years someone at the ICRC, the Red Cross finds someone who seems to look like Ahmed in this prison in Afghanistan. He's remained in this prison for five years, of course no one knew about that, but yeah so anyway what happens is this woman from the Red Cross takes the picture, yeah to him and asks him if she recognizes the woman and he says no his name's Ali and he doesn't know her, because that's what he's been told he has to say. But thankfully as she's leaving he says in a plaintiff little voice oh can I keep that picture. And so you know as far as Fowzia is concerned, she that might well be him. Now in the meantime the authorities in Pakistan do something pretty reprehensible, and they tell Fowzia that there's this other boy who is Ahmed and she says no there isn't he's not related to me I mean I'll adopt him if you want me to, but it's not Ahmed. So, in the meantime she wants to talk to the child in this prison in Afghanistan. Fowzia has a very distinct voice and she had a very good relationship with Ahmed, because um Ahmed did not get along with his father at all, and spent a lot of time with Fowzia and so Ahmed called Fowzia Ada, which I'm reliably told doesn't mean anything, and it was just a you know a silly little nickname. So when she gets she she forces them to let her have a phone call with this child, the moment she says a word in her quite distinctive voice the little voice at the other end of the line says and at this point for Fowzia you know forget the DNA and everything we know who that is, but they did do the DNA. Discovered it was indeed Ahmed and so she got him, then she now knows that she can get the others if she just keeps trying, so she carries on she ends up meeting Hamid Karzai, and convinces him of the horrors of all of this and to his credit he then says to his people, you know you've got to find this little girl. Because I the former Afghan president, yes and so then again, they go through all these Shenanigans and they try and get Fowzia a very educated sophisticated person to sign a bunch of documents without looking at them, which she refuses to do. So she thinks she's blown it and she's not going to get the little girl back, but then a couple of weeks later little girls dropped on the streets of Karachi near Fowzia's house with a little tag around her neck, and the local security guard brings the child to their house, and you know this is a girl who from the age of three to eight has been with Josh and Natalie, and is totally confused and traumatized. But now um Fowzia has them both, and then there's an argument because they were born in America so the U.S citizens as am I, and the U.S doesn't think Fowzia should adopt them and comes up with all this nonsense about how you know “they're Americans they should be given the opportunity of being in America”, and Fowzia says: Oh you mean you think they might have a Harvard educated parent, and you know some some doctor who can look after him and the American says yes, and she says well that's me. And you know, this is just but I look at that, and I think to myself, Who was it that thought that it was okay to take two little American children wrench them to another country, put one of them in prison, and make him say he's an Afghan child, and the other in some random family, I mean who thought that that was something that our government had the right to do it's just beyond me.
And with Suleiman?
And Suleiman, we still haven't found him and you know I was first thinking well a kid was killed that's that. But actually when I learned about all this other stuff with Ahmed and Maryam you think well you know maybe he didn't die and maybe he was adopted into another family, he was six months old he wouldn't know who he was. So, for all we know he's in Arkansas or someplace with some American family. So, you know that is possibly you know the whole having idea of having disappeared children. Um you just never give up do you if it was my child you'd never give up, yeah. And so, until we get some sort of closure one way or the other, I don't think this family is ever going to give up.
I want to go back to a 2008 episode, but before I do so you you talked about two terms of here. You've discussed ghost prisoners and rendition, I mean I've got a very basic understanding of these, but for our viewers can you just explain who are these ghost prisoners? How many of them are there? what was the rendition program, and you know What were the implications on civil liberties and international law?
You know when when Guantanamo first started right after 9 11. I was in Louisiana during death penalty defense um back then. And when all of this happened on 9 11, and the Americans responded so viscerally, to be honest I just didn't get it and that was partly because I grew up as a child in Europe, and yeah let's face it we've been killing each other for the last 2 000 years. And one thing that one has to understand about the American people yeah is that you could name the three times that America's territorial integrity has been attacked and you could name the dates of two of 9 11 December the 7th 1941, which was Pearl Harbor and then the third one was The War of 1812. Yeah, that's it that's the only times it's ever happened and so this had an enormous impact on the American psyche, and when our beloved government came up with the idea of Guantanamo Bay I was aghast, you know my whole life has been about preserving the the Liberties that we have in the US Constitution which was a fabulous document um, and this was just more of the same that we've been doing to young black men for a long time, suddenly we had a new hate group which forbidden Muslims. Sorry about this too loud, that's you, um and so what we did was we jettisoned hundreds of years of the development of the rule of law, and we started this rendition program, and rendition is a word we just make that up because in you know there's a perfectly legal way to take people from one country to the other and that's called Extradition. You go through a court system, when you don't go through a court system it's called kidnapping, and that's a perfectly good word for that but we started using rendition, still more extraordinary rendition, which is really just kidnapping, right. And we kept everything secret, and for years and centuries that's been illegal you can't go arrest someone and keep them secret and not give them a lawyer and all that stuff. So, we took people to secret prisons, Guantanamo Bay, in the early days was utterly secret, right. When I first sued it which was February the 19th, 2002, um no one knew who was in there because they wouldn't tell you. And I genuinely thought there were a bunch of you know guys captured on the battlefield of Afghanistan, turned out to be totally untrue, um but then with some people who we thought for one reason or another were particularly bad dudes, we took them to a series of secret prisons, and yeah I'll tell you just briefly the story of Binyam Mohammed who is from here in London, and Binyam, um they thought he was behind a nuclear bomb plot. And how's your physics Jalal? Not very good no. I think it's good enough to understand what I'm about to say is nonsense, yes. He was tortured into saying that he knew how to make a nuclear bomb, wow. And he said that what you do is you put your Uranium in a bucket you swing it around your head for 45 minutes that divides uranium 239 from uranium 235, yes. Well, I mean the truth is I don't know why Iran wants these centrifuges and this when they can do it on a bucket. And this was the basis of the nuclear bomb plot, so we were and I you know I backtracked that when I represented Binyam, and discovered it was a spoof article from 1972 that he had seen, and you say this is the crazy stuff that came out. But the US was deeply paranoid at that point and would take people to secret prisons Binyam was taken to a prison in Morocco, where they took a razor blade to his genitals every two weeks for a year and a half. And then you get all of this total nonsense out of people, and this happened a lot. Now, with Aafia you and then you have to backtrack to try to work out why did they think this person was such a big deal when there's actually nobody from London, um. And so with Aafia it was interesting and I just learned something quite interesting about Aafia which I didn't know, which is in addition to having people turn folk in with false stories for bounties. With Aafia, the US had got it in there tiny little minds that Aafia was somehow a bad person, because she had a degree and she could go in and out of America, and you know so they thought oh maybe she's the next pilot pilot a plane somewhere. And so, they start interrogating people about the the folk that they're concerned about, and the problem with that is they're torturing those folk right. And what I learned was this, that there there was a picture book of everyone's photographs of the people they were suspects of, and the people who were being tortured knew they had to say something about someone, but they didn't know any of these people and someone. And, so, I won't name who said this because, he's very embarrassed about it, that um one of the person people told me that actually among these prisoners what they did was because they didn't know anything. They made up stories about the woman because they thought in their rather chauvinist world that the US would never do anything to a woman. So it was safest if you're gonna make up a lie to do it on the woman and that's why the US got it in their minds that somehow Aafia was a bad person, and then suddenly you get this game of circular game of everyone making up more stories, and so on and so forth. It's why you need a real trial so you can sort the week from the chat.
So, in 2008 she was released from her prison from the prison as a ghost prisoner from Afghanistan, and she ends up in Ghazi, in Ghazni province in in Afghanistan outside the governor's house. Now the U.S claim she had a bag full of so-called extremists or terrorist material maps and various other concoctions, and um well to talk us through the story. So, what happens when she ends up…?
But let me tell you what really happened right, I'm sorry I do let you get a word in edge race every now and then Jalal, I’m sorry about that. Yeah, that’s the trouble inviting lawyers on your program, they never shut up. Um what happened is quite extraordinary, I I believe Aafia and she's told me, but what she says just makes a thousand times more sense than what the Americans say. Aafia says that when she's dumped out Bagram, she's told by the Afghans that she can get her daughter back oh. Maryam, and that if she goes to Ghazni she'll be able to get her daughter there right. So, she's totally traumatized at this point, but the one thing that's she's clung to the whole time in Bagram is where's my son, my daughter and my other son. So she goes to Ghazni thinking she's going to get her daughter back. well the Afghans are done, because you know really, the truth is when we've done things like this we kind of want to get rid of you because then there'll be no stories about it, right. The Afghans had told the Americans that she was a suicide bomber, and she was gonna target the Governor of Ghazni.
And so, this all comes from the Afghans.
Well, I'm not sure it's all the Afghans, but anyway they tell the Americans that the Americans come flooding in, and they shoot her, and they shoot her thinking she's a suicide bomber. They’ll discover she's not a suicide bomber, oh dear. Now we've got to have a different story and they didn't kill her, so it's at that point they start coming up with this other story and now the trial story. They took her having you know given us some medical attention back in Bagram, they took her to the southern district of New York, right. Now one thing you need to know about the SDNY is it has a 99% conviction rate it's not a place you get a fair trial. But that's true of most federal courts in America to be honest right, so they took it there and the story that they told was that she was in American custody, that she'd been in custody for a while. But she wasn't handcuffed that's a lie that it would never ever happen right, um. But then, a soldier left his rifle on the ground and attended that would just never have enough you've got to be kidding me, and they say she reached for that gun to use the gun to try and shoot her way out apparently of the prison she was in, which was pretty stupid too, and then they shot her in self-defense, and then they charge her although she's the only one who's been shot. They charge her with attempted murder of a federal official. Now you know this is so much wrong with that quite apart from the fact, I mean let's pretend for a minute that all of that happened we're in a war zone, you know if she really is an evil enemy of America it's a war, you know she's not guilty of attempted murder she's guilty of being in a fight. Um but it's not what happened and so the U.S confected that whole thing and then she had a profoundly unfair trial. But in the meantime, poor Aafia was totally traumatized having just got out of five years of torture having not got a kids back and having then been shot you know it's poor woman it's astounding she can still string a sentence together.
So she stands trial in 2008-2009 in in the United States, why didn't the federal prosecutors bring up the terrorist charges? Why did they charge the wrong…
You've got to put your finger right on it right, they didn't bring up the terrorist charges because there weren't any terrorist charges. Um part of the problem was they didn't want the jurist to know about five years of her being disappeared and tortured. Now the moment they say you know first thing is they don't have any evidence that they could possibly use in a court, that she was a terrorist, but if they did that would allow the defense to introduce everything that they did. now they managed to keep all of that basically out right, so you know the…
This bag full of evidence, so-called evidence has ever come up has it…
Oh look, I've seen certain things it doesn't show anything, um you know. Again, we're talking I've been through this a thousand times with the Guantanamo prisoners, they have all of these different um allegations that are just extraordinary yeah. But you see them in every case I mean this thing see what that is? the Casio watch, no it's not, it's evidence that I am a terrorist, really? Because almost I think, roughly about a third of the people in Guantanamo Bay were accused of being terrorists in part because they had Casio watches. Can I see your watch?
I don't have a Casio, no but that's that that's something I don't want to be accused of being a terrorist. Perhaps you're not a terrorist, I don't know but there are lots of other reasons I suspect you just because you're a bearded Muslim, yes. Um yeah no, this is the sort of crazy stuff.
So I don't, the Casio watch explained that to me, so why?
So the US government someone infantile yeah decided that Casios were what could best be used to make a bomb, oh apparently so I don't know if Cassio wants to comment on that. But I bought this because, when I was representing Binyam Mohammed he told me that, and I thought you know, I'm sorry just as a laugh. I think I'm gonna wear one too, because I'm gonna go to thoughts on this ridiculous allegation wearing a Casio watch.
Wow, so she stands trial, and she's prosecuted for the attempted murder of two FBI agents, and she's found guilty of of that. Did she protest her innocence during that trial? So, explain her state of mind during that trial.
Well I think that's a difficult thing, because and I'm also slightly less to talk too much about Aadia’s traumatized, um physical and mental state. Because my father was bipolar, and my father was had a very problematic life, and we all know how it undermines the dignity of people to talk too much about what, I don't like the term mental illness, I think it's a bad term, yeah. But I don't want to go saying too much. Aafia, I'm going to say this about her: if I took you, I killed one of your children in front of you, I took the other two children and disappeared them, I took you off and tortured you for five years, then I told you you could have a kid back and I shot you and then I accused you of attempted murder. Where do you think you'd be? And, um so you know that's really all one needs to say on that. I think it's a miracle that when I did get to meet her, um well she has all sorts of thoughts about America that might make the average person think she was pretty paranoid. The truth is, man I think we'd all be a bit paranoid if then, you know Fowzia wonderfully intelligent sensible human being yeah would not fly to America by herself without me going with her because she was worried it was going to happen to her. Now you know so I'm not going to say that in any way Aafia is anything other than traumatized by the unspeakable things that we've done to her.
So Fowzia went to see Aafia for the first time a couple of months back uh, you were present with her. So how did you manage to see?
Well, I mean I only got involved in Aafia's case in January, and the reason for that was I just got three of the Pakistani folk out of Guantanamo, and in a very stupid moment I thought I had some spare time on my hands and Fowzia asked me if I'd go see Aafia, yes. And I was in Guantanamo and you know I had to go to Texas anyhow so I it would have been childish to not say yes, yes. So I went to see off here and the moment you've met this poor woman you just you can't say no right um. So I saw her for, um one visit in January and then you know at that point you've got to do something about it. So I thought having met Aafia, that the most important thing was Aafia needed to reconnect with her family, okay. And so, Fowzia had been denied a Visa for a long time, but I I just don't think that people have been helping her know how easy it is to bully countries, right. I've got to say it's my profession, I love doing it on behalf of our weak, and um abused people yeah. So we got the US to give her a visa pretty quickly, and then she was very worried about going into America. so we got you know I wrote to the Americans, and we told the Pakistan government they had to, and to their credit you know I flew seven hours in the wrong direction to Dubai to meter and then 16 hours the other direction to Houston. The US was really good, and they met us at the gates of the plane whisked us through I wish I might get that every time I go to America it'd be great, yeah. Um so it was fine and then we went up to Fort Worth and I'd arranged for us to go in three days in a row, um. And Senator Mushtaq Ahmed was with us who's been a very staunch and decent ally senator from Pakistan. And so you know I took, because you're in first and you know fabulous to get her in to see Aafia but there were some things about them which just illustrates the inhumanity of this. So they wouldn't allow a contact visit, so I asked and Fowzia asked can I just hug my sister for the first time in 20 years? no no no. We've been through all the searches I mean there's nothing we were going to do, and this is just mean um you know the guards were nice don't get me wrong they were perfectly professional and they tried to be nice, but this was the rules and so some of that was deeply unsatisfactory, but at the same time that is lovely that they were both there and some of the stuff just made me laugh. You know, the two of them they're sitting there and they're swapping a few stories and then they start singing these play down ground ditties apparently Aafia once thought she was Shirley Temple with her little curly curls, and they start singing some ridiculous song. And it was lovely it was very sweet, but incredibly traumatic for both of the sisters but one Aafia was going to go back to her cell and and didn't know if she'd ever see her sister again, and Fowzia had to leave the prison which is the worst thing you'd never have. So it was really hard on both of them.
Does Aafia know what happened to her her two children you know to Ahmad and Maryam; does she know about their whereabouts and how they're doing and there?
Well she does now, I mean one of the other things which was just stupid is they wouldn't let Fawzia show pictures oh the visit, right um. But they'd let me do it on a legal visit I had a legal visit the second day so I took the pictures in you know so why am I as a lawyer allowed to do that that somehow Fawzia is not so that was just silly. But certainly she knows, but one of the things that struck me very profoundly was when Aafia talks about her children, she talks about a three-year-old and a five-year-old. You know she's that her life froze in that instance in 2003, and I've met the kids, and they're very impressive, and Fowzia has done a fabulous job in addition to her own four children raising those two. And Ahmed just graduated, he’s doctor and he's now fully qualified so he's every time I go to Pakistan I get Delhi belly. Because I'm called plive and Clive was a bad guy in India as you know. So that's their the revenge on me, so I'm glad I've got another doctor to look after me, yes. And then Maryam has just finished her third year as a medical student, so they've done fabulously well that, and Fawzia has really protected them from you know the the ongoing trauma of the trauma that they went through.
Let's talk about Pakistan um she's been called, Aafia has been called the daughter of the nation in the country. her arrest and conviction caused the series of protests, I think across the country. I mean abduction, and ..abduction, you know um. Now has the Pakistani government genuinely attempted to use all diplomatic measures to repatriate Aafia.
Well I think you know and I know that there's more than one Pakistan government. And yeah, look I Love Pakistan, don’t worry I love India too. I don't want to you know rub you the wrong way Jalal. But, I have a very soft spot for Pakistan, and I think there are some wonderful things about the Pakistan Constitution, and the courts. You know they exercise more power than the British courts certainly, and that's great. But to watch what happens there is very worrying and to watch the gradual um you know takeover of democracy by the military, and the ISI is just wrong. Those people need to get out of the business of government um. Not that they're going to listen to me, but they know that I know that they were the ones behind all of this and. I'm so so when we talk about the government I don't think there's an elected politician in Pakistan who's not on our side. Because they know which side their Bread's buttered, and everybody in Pakistan to a person who I've ever talked to once Aafia brought in. And I think some of them are genuine I mean Shabazz Sharif has met with Fowzia twice in the last couple of months, and has been I think very sincere in saying that that he's trying to help. The question is why can't they now I'm not going to go into total details on this but I will give you a sense of what's happening. So I, we got a really fine judge in that Islamabad high court right who has been doing what judges ought to do which is to go to bat for weak people who are being trampled on. And I'd asked the judge who's been very nice to me um to order the government to produce some things I mean we know all sorts of things that they're in their hands that I need. One of the things I need to get Aafia home is proof of everything she's gone through so we can do the compassionate release route, and part of that involves the five years she was missing, and the torture she went through. You know it may well be for example that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who thinks you know who according to the US is behind 9 11 it may well be that he avoids the death penalty, because he was tortured and you know that's a mitigating circumstance that's going to avoid him you know the person who we say has murdered more people than anyone else in history almost. that he shouldn't you know get a reduced sentence, so clearly it's relevant to me for Aafia to get all the evidence of her torture, you know and I know that the people who did that stuff don't want it to come into the daylight so I think it's going to be that part of the the process here is that we have to take a position that the people who committed these criminal offenses of unspeakable nature I get away with it you know I'm okay with that honestly I don't really believe in persecuting anyone, um because I think there are people who are afraid that their sins are going to catch up with them if Aafia comes home, and so they're resisting her coming home and I think that's the deep state of Pakistan rather than the superficial state. So in a long answer to your question most people are genuine, but they don't think they really have the power to make the people who do have the power do what's right. Now, I think we do have the power that's my job my job is to force anyone who's standing in Aafia’s way to get out of the way and, and you know I'm going to be reasonable about it, I'm not into slacking people about unless they require it. I'm hoping that we can convince all these people that they should just help us do what's right, and and be done with it.
It's always a a thought in my mind whenever I mean Aafia I'd grown up knowing about Aafia and her condition. And you know it's really affected not just myself, but Muslims around the world, I think and everywhere when I was in turkey and people asking me about our fear thinking that I'm you know originally from Pakistan. It's just it's one of those one of those subjects that's very raw and felt by by large numbers of Muslims, but we do feel helpless we feel that um apart from hiring lawyers, I know you're not hired and you do this pro-bono, but apart from having
We have to, you know I'm not hired because as an American it's my duty to set straight right the wrongs that my country's done and you can't go around telling people they have to pay for them.
Right so apart from having you know good people like you to Advocate on Aafia’s behalf, how can ordinary Pakistanis, Muslims around the world help Aafia?
Jalal do you consider yourself an ordinary Muslim around the world?
fairly fairly much so yes yeah I got a Podcast,
but you're proving your point, there is no one out there who doesn't have a talent that can help Aafia. You're demonstrating it you know I didn't honestly come to this because I just love talking to a microphone, I did it because you're going to reach people who can help Aafia, and there's not a person out there who can't help Aafia, you and so you know you take anything there are people everyone out there on the most basic and simple level yeah can write to her. Now they can't write for the prison because a useless prison won't let it in but you can write to me, and I'll get it in and my email is Clive c l i v e @ three the number three dc dot org dot UK, and now that you've all gone put it in the show yeah, and anyone can write to me I will take that in on my next legal visit with her and the thing about that that's good is on my first visit when I told Aafia that she's a legend in Pakistan she was visibly shocked, she thought everyone had abandoned her so having people do the simple act of writing tour is fabulous. But there are lots of other people who and other talents. With my Guantanamo clients I've had people who have been artists who have worked on the artwork that my client said from Gitmo Aafia is a great poet, you know we can take her poetry and do that. Um then yeah even with Guantanamo we've got a Guantanamo cookbook coming out. Now you know those things reach a lot of people and you can do those things you can dedicate it to Aafia that not only gives her dignity, but you can maybe raise some funds a bit and help us you know we do have lots of costs we've got to get doctors in to see her we've got to fly Fawzia around the world on this stuff and so on and so forth. So yeah we have a crowdfunder actually if you put that up if you don't mind and um and that way we can we can raise the funds we need to make things happen. And in the end we'll get her out of there and um and then you know some of the great people in America who I've met on this, and Muslim folk have I want to build a network of Muslim Americans who are going to contact their senators so that we can then get to those senators and we can get those Senators to get to Biden and then we can get Biden to help us cut a deal and the obvious deal is Shaheed Afridi right? not Shahid, Shakil Afridi, Shaheed Afridi, I think plays cricket for my team, yeah now he actually played against us in Pakistan. When I was on a tour down there so it's not Shaheed, sorry Shaheed, it's Shakil Afridi, because the Americans think Shakil Afridi helped us murder Bin Laden. So the Americans would love to swap Aafia for Shakil at this point I think right. Now there is some resistance in Pakistan to that from certain people we need to just convince those people not to resist and then we've got to get to Biden to make that happen and then we can swap her and send her back to where she needs to be in Karachi um so anyway everyone can help I just want everyone who's watching your show to know that you can help.
So we've got to keep the issue live, we've got to raise it on our platforms we've got to make sure that Aafia’s name is not forgotten, writing letters to her on a regular basis would be would be very welcome. So I I will put your email address.
But also have your kids write poetry in school how you know whatever, but also have um you know think about the different things that your individual talents are most suited to because really that's what matters right, and if you're good at making a video game make a video game where you have to go through all these steps um to take an innocent Pakistani woman and tortured you know because then people like my son who would be totally into any video game that involved that will learn what's really happening or or whatever you know there's no limit to what you can do
Clive you advocate for prisoners from Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere I mean what motivates you to keep the fight going
Well I don't see any other point to life frankly um and I know my mother bless her who died earlier this year would look at me very negatively if I didn't she told me look I'm an old OPWM as I call me which means old privilege white male, and that gives me a lot of power as the US Constitution gives me a lot of power, and what's the point of that except to help people who are powerless and there's nothing better look I love my job don't ever think that it's tough on me I get to get up every morning and I wish there were 48 hours in the day, because it's just so interesting and rewarding and when you get to give someone their life back nothing better.
Are you hopeful that Aafia will be released or at least we'll be able to spend the rest of her sentence in Pakistan?
Yeah, I'm not hopeful I'm telling you it's going to happen really and it's just a matter of how many people resist us for how long, but it's going to happen. I'm not saying it's easy it's not going to be easy because there's a lot of people out there who have a lot of prejudices. But yeah we're gonna we're gonna make it happen I wish she was in Guantanamo it would be much easier if she was in Guantanamo, really. But at the same time yeah we'll get around.
Finally, I remember watching or listening to I was on my way to work I think I was listening to your um your interview on Desert Island Disc, we spoke back in 2000 early 2000s and I think the last question the normal question the setup question is you know, what books would you take to to um to your Desert Island, to your mythical desert island I think your response was something like you would take the Arabic and English version of the Quran, I know you're very busy but how's that project going, going for you have you managed to read
Look I've read the Quran when I was young the reason I wanted to take it then it was I think it was around 2002 was I knew that I needed to learn Arabic, and I thought I should do it that way and the way I always learn foreign languages is by learning poetry because then you know when I do “Nel Mezzo del Camin di Nostra Vita” in Italian and then I may have a dreadful accent that I sound incredibly erudite and pompous, because I'm citing Dante. So I thought I would learn Arabic by learning the Quran and then I'd sound very pompous, but I'm afraid it didn't get very far I will tell you a story about that right after 9 11, yeah. I thought no I've got to go back and read the Quran again I haven't read that for a long time and I had a copy and please don't condemn me for this but when I was in college when I read the Quran I highlighted passages right. Well, I think it could be viewed as desecrating the Quran I didn't mean it that way and so I had I took my Quran with me on the flight right after 9 11. And um I'm just approaching the desk where they search you and I think oh my goodness I've highlighted a few slightly weird sounding passages in the Quran and when they opened that book they're gonna think I'm a true terrorist and so I was sweating as I came up there. And so they passed right over the crown they didn't even notice and they found a set of nail clippers which is why they took me aside and said you can't take these nail clippers on board, and I thought no wonder the Americans are never going to catch anyone.
Clive Stafford Smith you've been really gracious with your time thank you very much for your time.
My pleasure, thank you so much, thank you