A full report, and the four hour secretly recorded tape, in Urdu, Punjabi and English, is being released by the International Justice Network today.
It confirms Aafia was picked up from Karachi and confirms what we the people of Pakistan have been screaming.
You can download the full report and the full tape (Warning: 125 MB) from http://ijnetwork.org )
Here is the relevant clip:
http://ijnetwork.org/report/IJNetworkTape.WAV
And here is the transcript:
Mr Shaukat (who is voice 2 on the tape) says, “I am stationed in Karachi. I head the counter terrorism department for Sindh province.”
In the key passage in the tape for the Siddiqui case he is asked by:
Minutes 02:14:00 – 02:16:00 :
V1: So, Afia Siddiqui too suffered the same fate; five years in Afghanistan (UI)?
UM2: Did they cause her trouble? Did they get statements from her?
V2: She’s stick thin.
UM2: She’s also crazy.
V2: You know what, I hadn’t seen her face.
V1: Earlier?
V2: Not until I arrested her. She had an American demeanor when she was
apprehended.
V1: Did you arrest her?
V2: Yes, I arrested her. She wore gloves and a veil.
UM1: What do you think, will she be released?
V1: No way. She’s already been convicted.
UM1: How long will media?
V1: She’s convicted.
V2: (UI) Some mullah or cleric crying.
UM2: She was caught alone.
V1: How, alone? She was in their high-security prison for five or six years.
V2: When
V1: You mean they grabbed her here in Pakistan.
V2: Yes. When snagged in the company of clerics she was by herself.
UM2: What does that have to do with anything, sir? I have lived with clerics.
UM3: (Aside) She had a call. (End of Aside)
UM2: (UI)
UM1: That’s what he is saying.
UM2: (UI) Target.
V1: How did it get to be 2 o clock.
V1: (Aside) What’s the nominated trump? (End of Aside) (UI)
V2: She was hobnobbing with clerics. (UI)
V1: (Aside) What’s the nominated trump? (End of Aside) She was arrested in 2003?
V2: Yes, 2003.
V1: So what happened after the arrest? Did ISI ask for her custody?
V2: Yes, we gave her to ISI.
V1: ISI or something else?
V2: ISI. So, we gave her to them.
Mr Shaukat describes her as “stick thin” and “a psycho”, and, elsewhere as “not a handler, a minor facilitator” – presumably for Al Qaeda - and he mentions a connection to Osama Bin Laden. Asked then why couldn’t she help them get Bin Laden, he replies, “Well, they are not fools. They wouldn’t inform her of their forwarding address.” And he says too about the children, “we took them with us. They were American nationals, children are American nationals, they were all born there.”
There is some discussion on the tape about the return of her daughter, Maryam. (Two unidentified voices are also heard.)
V1: Oh, another thing. They found her daughter yesterday.
V2: She’s home already.
V1: Yes, she’s home. She speaks English only. She was in the prison. She is seven or eight years old. And she only speaks English.
UM1: Eight years old?
V1: Yeah. Children were in prison and they spoke to them in American English.
UM1: Is she home?
V1: Yeah. They got her home.
V2: They were actually, I.
V1: Really?
V2: It’s five or six months.
UM2: Is she in Karachi?
V1: She got home today, yesterday.
V2: Well, it goes back to before I came here.
V1: I read the news just yesterday, today. Maybe, in the night.
V2: It’s two or three-months old.
All that has been reported in the public domain to date is that Maryam was returned a day or two before the recording. But, according to the childrens’ lawyer, Tina Foster, Mr Shaukat’s description is consistent with how Maryam was repatriated to Pakistan.
Elsewhere in the tape Imran Shaukat talks about how the Pakistani police and ISI work to “disappear” or to use people they have taken into custody. According to Amina Masood Janjua at Defence for Human Rights, there are currently about 500 people who have disappeared in Pakistan as part of the “war on terror” – this does not include Sindhi and Balochi separatists. Part of the audio describes the doctoring or manufacturing of documents, creating false identities, using body doubles, with reference to various terrorist attacks, including Mumbai. “This is a game of double dealing, direct them right and exit left,” Mr Shaukat says at one point.
Such details are an explanation of the extraordinary litany of contradictory stories about Dr Siddiqui, including curious reported sightings by family members, that were launched into the public domain over the five years after her disappearance. In this John Le Carre world of ruthless manipulation of the vulnerable it is impossible to know how, or whether, she could have been used in counter terrorism’s goal at the time of finding Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.
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