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Video: Aafia Siddiqui and America’s Disappeared – Andy Worthington Speaks at a Protest at the US Embassy in London
On Saturday March 31, I was delighted to be asked to speak at a demonstration outside the US Embassy marking the 9th anniversary of the disappearance of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who vanished with her three children in Karachi on March 30, 2003. It took nearly five and a half years until she reappeared in Afghanistan, where she was arrested by Afghan soldiers, and where, after apparently trying and failing to shoot at the US soldiers to whose custody she had been transferred, she was flown to the United States — rendered, one might say — where she was tried in New York, and, in September 2010, sentenced to 86 years in prison. (Click on the image to make it full-size).
I have written about Aafia Siddiqui’s case on many occasions, and have also spoken about her at several demonstrations and other meetings, but her story never becomes any easier in the telling, as it is so full of holes, involves rumours of her torture, the disappearance of two of her children for many years, and the presumption that her third child, a baby boy, was killed at the time of her disappearance. It also remains opaque and troubling because of the strange circumstances of her capture in 2008, her odd trial, and that hugely draconian sentence. Her alleged role as an al-Qaeda operative remains shadowy, and her current situation remains a source of alarm, as she is held in Carswell, in Fort Worth, Texas, a Federal Medical Center that provides specialized medical and mental health services to female offenders, but that has a terrible reputation for the abuse of the women held there.
The demonstration, which was organised by the Justice for Aafia Coalition, featured several other speakers, whose videos can be found here, and as many of them were speaking eloquently and at length about Dr. Siddiqui’s case, I took the opportunity to explain how she was one of many dozens of “high-value detainees” subjected to extraordinary rendition and torture in the Bush years, and to mention not only how there has been no accountability for those who authorised the program, but also how there has never been an official account of who was held.
We do, however, know that some of the many dozens of prisoners ended up in Guantánamo in September 2006, after years in secret CIA prisons, and I took the opportunity to talk about one of these men, Abu Zubaydah, the first of the “high-value detainees,” for whom the torture program was specifically developed. Zubaydah’s capture took place almost exactly a year before Dr. Siddiqui’s capture, and at the protest I drew on the various elements of this story that I described in my recent article, Ten Years of Torture: On Anniversary of Abu Zubaydah’s Capture, Poland Charges Former Spy Chief Over “Black Site”.
Below is another short video of Lt. Col. Lorraine Barlett, a member of the US Army Judge Advocate General Corps, who is currently serving as a defense counsel with the Office of Military Commissions, representing a Saudi prisoner, Ghassan al-Sharbi, who was charged under President Bush in 2008, but then had those charges dropped. He has not been charged again under President Obama. I was meeting Lt. Col. Barlett, and had suggested meeting at the rally, where I thought she would meet some interesting people, and be well-received, and I will be writing an article about her client in the near future. In the meantime, you can support his release via this Facebook page.
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The long shadow of Fascism, always linked to Late Capitalism needs a historical examination as it applies today to NATO NAZIS, AMERIKAN
NAZIS i.e. WESTERN FASCISTS. First and foremost 9/11 was Amerika's Reichstag moment, CO OPTING FASCIST PROCESS, which
implicates not only Bush and Obama, Western NATO STATES, particularly its fascist police/intelligence GESTAPO links to all failed,
rogue, class deformed states, but the whole of class history to totalitarianism, today's form: A WESTERN, GLOBAL FASCIST MATRIX.
The whole Post World War II period must be seen as a prelude, BLOW BACK, to today's global Fascism. The willing ignorance by most
Amerikans and willing DECEPTION by most imperial elites within the U.S. empire allowed and promoted FASCIST,CRIMINAL WARS OF
AGGRESSION, support for fascist dictators, as puppets serving CORPORATE FASCISM, The millions of lives destroyed by U.S. empire
BEFORE 9/11, with its illegal wars and U.S. sponsored, fascist military regimes is the classic INVERSION, ORWELLIAN, TOTALITARIAN
CLASS PRINCIPLE, that calls CLASS TYRANNY, MILITARY FASCISM ...."FREEDOM" OR THE "FREE WORLD", when it clearly was a copy
of the CORPORATE FASCIST EMPIRE OF NAZI GERMANY.
Insurgency movements to counter FASCIST U.S. EMPIRE NAZIS, produced the FASCIST COUNTER INSURGENCY OF THE NAZIS over
at the Pentagon, armed forces. State Terrorism, FASCISM, by the U.S. would produce COUNTER TERRORISM to the thuggish policies,
criminal policies by both CORPORATE, EMPIRE PARTIES, the corrupt democrats, and totalitarian republicans. 9/11 was a RESPONSE
to Ameirkan fascist Empire, and its fascist foreign policies, WHICH MOST AMERIKANS IGNORED, until it came home to them, HENCE
THE REASON, THE CORPORATE MEDIA FASCIST PROPAGANDISTS, NEVER DISCUSSED THE "WHY" OF 9/11. Instead, it WAS
CO OPTED into the fake WAR ON TERRORISM, leaving out the LONG HISTORICAL STATE TERRORISM OF FASCIST U.S. EMPIRE, so
that democrats, republicans CAN CONTINUE THE VERY SAME FASCIST FOREIGN POLICIES, STATE TERRORISM, to continue the
endless BASES AND FASCIST MILITARIZATION THAT HAS NOW BECOME PERMANENT WAR, PERMANENT FASCISM.
Failure to account for the DEFORMED POLICIES OF FAILED CLASS STATES, has resulted in TORTURE, RENDITION AND MORE FASCISM.
Obama has morphed from FASCIST APPEASEMENT INTO A FASCIST THUG himself, protecting FASCIST CIA THUGS, TORTURERS, WAR
CRIMINALS, AND HAS BECOME A WAR CRIMINAL PRESIDENT HIMSELF. The Human rights organization are at WAR WITH WESTERN
FASCISM, ITS FASCIST POLICE/CLASS POLITICAL HIERARCHIES covering up the torture, rendition of MANY WESTERN STATES who
were blackmailed, co opted, corrupted, coerced by BUSH AND OBAMA to hide these WAR CRIMES. You can be sure, right now, that like
the blackmailing of Spanish Judges not to prosecute Bush officials, or the blackmailing of U.S. sponsored dictators, like Yemen, to falsely
prosecute journalist, and personal calls to continue imprisonment, FASCIST, CRIMINAL OBAMA is blackmailing NATO Nations, like Poland,
Lithuania TO SHUT DOWN INVESTIGATIONS OF THEIR WAR CRIMES, FASCISM: Someone should make a MOVIE/DOCUMENTARY of the
multitudes of FASCIST POLITICIANS, MILITARY HIERARCHIES INVOLVED IN U.S. FASCISM:
Ten Years of Torture: On Anniversary of Abu Zubaydah’s Capture, Poland Charges Former Spy Chief Over “Black Site”
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/03/30/ten-years-of-torture-on-anniversary-of-abu-zubaydahs-capture-poland-charges-former-spy-chief-over-black-site/
EXCERPT:
"....With all avenues to accountability closed in the US, where President Obama has repeatedly blocked attempts by victims of torture to secure access to any US courtroom, invoking the little-used “state secrets” doctrine, any attempts to secure accountability have had to be initiated in other countries. Two torture cases, which began in 2009, are ongoing in Spain, despite attempts by the Obama administration to shut them down, and the most recent submission, by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, was in February this year....
In January 2011, Abu Zubaydah was also recognized as a victim, and although the trail has largely gone cold over the last year, it came back to life on March 27, the day before the 10th anniversary of Zubaydah’s capture, when the Polish media announced that Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, who was the chief of Poland’s intelligence services from 2002 to 2004, when the CIA prison was operating, has been accused, by the Warsaw Prosecutor Waledmar Tyl, of “exceeding his powers and breaching international law, with specific charges that he was involved in the ‘unlawful deprivation of liberty’” of prisoners and their physical punishment.
Siemiatkowski has announced his intention not to cooperate. In an interview with the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper and the TVP television station, he said, “While in the prosecutor’s office I refused to answer questions and I shall continue to do so at every stage of the proceedings, including in court.” However, although he also said that prosecutors first announced their intention to act on January 10, and TheNews.pl website announced that “the completion of Poland’s official investigation into the affair was delayed for a second time on 1 February, with Warsaw Prosecutor Waledmar Tyl suggesting that the results may not see the light of day until August this year,” Gazeta Wyborcza claimed that “prosecutors acted after receiving full documentation from Poland’s Intelligence Agency about cooperation with the CIA in the first years of the War on Terrorism,” indicating that there is a solid case against Siemiatkowski — and also, presumably, against his deputy, Col. Andrzej Derlatka, who was “directly responsible for dealing with the American intelligence service,” and will face similar charges...."
WANT TO BET, AND POSSIBLE WIKI LEAKS DOCUMENTS, WHICH WILL SHOW ONCE AGAIN, HOW WESTERN FASCIST POLITICIANS,
COLLUDE, COERCE, EACH OTHER TO PROTECT THEM FROM THEIR NAZISM, FASCISM, WAR CRIMES, AND POSSIBLY OBAMA,
HIMSELF, WHO HAS PERSONALLY BLACKMAILED SEVERAL TIMES TO STOP OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIONS OF HIS AND BUSH'S WAR
CRIMES.