Talking Headlines - by Bill Green

Subsequent to the Fleet National Bank investigation, Aafia Siddiqui was found to be purchasing high-tech military equipment, items that seemed unusual for her occupation as a microbiologist. According to Newsweek, FBI documents also stated that Khan, Siddiqui’s husband, had purchased body armor, night-vision goggles and a variety of military manuals that were supposed to be sent to Pakistan. Fleet National Bank accounts associated with the couple also showed "major purchases" from U.S. airlines and hotels in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as well as an $8,000 international wire transfer on December 21, 2001, to Habib Bank, a big Pakistani financial institution that has long been scrutinized by U.S. intelligence officials monitoring terrorist money flows

US officials insisted that they had no knowledge of her whereabouts until she was arrested by Afghan police for acting suspiciously outside the governor’s compound in the central Afghan province of Ghazni on July 17. They said that Ms Siddiqui was with a teenage boy at the time.

Prosecutors said that numerous documents were found in her handbag about “the creation of explosives, chemical weapons and other weapons”. Ms Siddiqui is also alleged to have had descriptions of landmarks in the US, documents about US military assets and excerpts from The Anarchist Arsenal.

Her trial should shed light on the mystery surrounding her disappearance with her children from the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2003. Her family claimed that she was abducted and imprisoned in a secret US detention centre

I think a lot of people have forgotten how all this started. David Hicks was in Afghanistan after the al-Qa'ida attack murdered thousands of people in the World Trade Centre. He wasn’t there as a backpacker going through the youth hostels of Afghanistan. He had trained in terrorism and when the Coalition forces went in to look for the al-Qa'ida organisation he was captured. Now it is true that it has taken far too long to bring him to trial and he ought to be brought to trial immediately. But I think some of the rhetoric has got out of control here Alan, as if he was some poor innocent abroad, backpacking through the sites and the sounds of Afghanistan. He was in Afghanistan because he had been trained by al-Qa'ida. He had been given weapons training. This was the organisation which he knew had just murdered thousands of people in New York including Australians. Australians died in the World Trade Centre. So by all means, the man is entitled to a trial, but let’s not sanctify what he did or why he was there."

D. is right. After all the trial of David Hicks really shed light on his involvement with al-qaeda right?

But her family say that far from being arrested last month, Ms Siddiqui disappeared from the Pakistani city of Karachi in 2003, along with her three children.

They fear that Ms Siddiqui has been the subject of extraordinary rendition, snatched off the street and held in secret for five years, during which, they suspect, she has been brutally interrogated. Several high-profile al-Qaeda suspects have been held at a detention facility at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan under conditions of such secrecy that they are nicknamed "ghost" prisoners.

One British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, suggested last year that Ms Siddiqui could be the supposed "grey lady of Bagram", a Pakistani woman who has allegedly been held there for years.

bullshit yellow journalism,

opinion pieces

bullshit yellow journalism,

opinion pieces

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