The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Show Trial

[Nur]

The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Show Trial

 

By J.R. Dunn

 

November 25, 2009 "American Thinker" -- AG Eric Holder's statement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will remain in custody no matter the verdict in his upcoming Manhattan trial coupled with Obama's instructions to the jury that KSM be "convicted and executed" reveals the entire exercise as a show trial -- a ritual effort intended not to achieve justice, but to make a public political point. The question is, what could that point possibly be?

 

 

Show trials have had a long and ignoble history in the last century. Pioneered in the USSR by the Stalin regime, they were used as method of instilling terror into the vozhd's enemies, ensuring party discipline, and creating propaganda spectacles for overseas consumption. During the purges of the 1930s, the show trial became one of the Soviet state's most potent instruments for breaking and humiliating prominent figures in the party, the military, and industrial and academic circles.

 

 

As a rule, the victim would be arrested by the security organs (at the time known by the acronym OGPU) and prepped with a year or more of interrogations coupled with savage treatment designed to produce "confessions" to any number of crimes. Once adequately prepared, they appeared for trial in a courtroom featuring up to three selected party judges, no jury, and no defense counsel.

 

 

The "trials" were orchestrated by Andrei Vyshinsky, chief prosecutor of the USSR, a figure typical of the unsavory careerists who attached themselves to Stalin. Vyshinsky was known to his victims as the "human rat," and with good reason, as his photographs reveal. In the courtroom, Vyshinsky would read from the "confession" and berate the defendant, who would repeatedly admit guilt and beg for mercy. At the end of the proceedings, a prearranged verdict and sentence were announced, almost always amounting to execution or a lengthy term in the Gulag. There was no such thing as an appeal.

 

 

While most trials went according to script, the occasional rare defendant would defy the process. Nikolai Bukharin, a veteran Bolshevik and former collaborator with Stalin, repudiated his confession on the stand while giving a detailed account of his mistreatment at the hands of the secret police. A recess was called, and Bukharin was taken into another room to find his daughter seated with a pistol at her head. He meekly returned to the stand and said not another word before being led to his execution.

 

 

The show trials were an effective means of cementing Stalin's rule, breaking up any possible opposition, and placing an iron yoke on the party and the populace. They continued at intervals throughout the Stalin period. Another round, this one aimed at Russian Jews, was being prepared at the time of Stalin's death in 1953.

 

 

Show trials also occurred in most other Marxist states, with particularly notorious examples in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Red China, where they were a major component of Mao's version of the Great Purge, the Great Cultural Revolution (1966-1974). For the most part, show trials did not play a large part in Nazi rule. The one exception was the trial of Marinus van der Lubbe, a subnormal Dutch Communist accused of setting fire to the Reichstag, Berlin's parliamentary building, on February 27, 1933. (The actual fire was set by a gang of Nazi storm troopers.) The trial was designed to give Hitler an excuse to round up German Communists once and for all. The lack of Nazi show trials may well be due to the German respect for rules and legal protocols, evident even among the Nazis. One example occurred in February 1945, when Roland Freisler, the Nazi version of Vyshinsky, was prosecuting Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a member of the German Resistance that had attempted to assassinate Hitler the previous year. An air raid took place during the trial, and Judge Freisler was killed by debris. A mistrial was declared, and von Schlabrendorff was remanded to custody. Before the trial could resume, the war had ended, and the defendant, directly involved in the attempt to kill Hitler, was set free and lived to a fine old age.

 

 

From this short history we can derive three things: that show trials are phony from start to finish, that they are staged for the purpose of making a political statement, and that they are almost always directed against domestic political opponents. So how does this template apply to the KSM trial?

 

 

We can dismiss the possibility that Obama thinks he can impress the rest of the world with his fairness and magnanimity. (And how many of us truly believe that O knew nothing about the decision, as Holder claims? While they may not have talked about it directly, the AG certainly got the nod and wink.) That may well be a partial motive, but with Holder's admission of fakery, that's gone. The same can be said of any notion that we can impress Muslim countries by bending over backwards in trying terrorists. They'll merely think we're being ******, naïve, or both. It doesn't require a lot to research to discover that regimes in Islamic countries have far less patience for terrorism than anyone in the West -- how fair is the treatment that members of the Muslim Brotherhood have received in Egypt?

 

 

Here we'll pause for a closer look at Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself. Apart from his involvement in murdering nearly three thousand people, what is he known for? Well, above all, he's the most prominent victim of Bush administration "torture" -- at least under the new definition of the term, which is "being made excessively uncomfortable for repeated short periods for purposes of breaking resistance to interrogation."

 

 

That's where we find our answer. The KSM show trial is not aimed at terrorists or an international audience. It's aimed, in the classic sense, at domestic enemies. Holder has been transparently eager to prosecute Bush officials involved in "torture" but was evidently told to low-key the effort -- little has been heard of it since the first announcement last spring. But here he has a workable substitute. There's no question that torture will come up -- really, it's the only thing the defense has. Endless discovery requests will be made for classified material concerning KSM's interrogations. These requests will be subject to interminable public debate. The material that is provided will be leaked to appear in the media and provide Democrats with opportunities to attack the GOP. The entire exercise will be turned into an indictment of the Bush administration, with the actual facts of the case -- the terrorist murder of thousands of Americans -- relegated to the background. And if the prosecution collapses (a distinct possibility), why, it's all Bush's fault.

 

 

What does Obama get out of all this? Take a look at the timeframe. Considering the glacial nature of current legal proceedings, it will be a year and a half to two years before the trial even starts, and it's likely to continue for at least a year...which puts it right in the middle of the 2012 election campaign. Put simply, Obama thinks he can run against Bush in 2012.

 

 

Put a bit more complexly, the trial offers Obama a chance to show that he's "tough on terrorism" while at the same time operating on an infinitely higher moral plane than such devils in human form as Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, and so on. This may seem smart -- after all, between the economy, health care, Iran, and Afghanistan, it's certainly beginning to look as if Obama will have nothing else to run on. But there exist several flaws in this scheme. Considering the public attention span as regards politics, running against Bush in 2012 will be like running against Franklin Pierce. And there's always the possibility of "events" intervening. It's unlikely that such a trial can occur without KSM's comrades giving him a shout-out in the form of a new attack visible from the courthouse. It doesn't have to be in Manhattan, either -- Jersey City and Brooklyn are both in line of sight and will do fine. It's possible that the administration believes it can dump such an eventuality in Bush's lap as well. If so, their first meaningful encounter with wartime public opinion remains ahead of them. And this is not considering the international response. Is it conceivable that the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran will allow infidels to conduct the lengthy trial of a brother Muslim without making their opinion known? There are a hundred ways this thing can go wrong. Is there any possible way it can go right?

 

 

This is not the first American show trial. That honor goes to a trial that occurred in 1944, in which a number of defendants opposed to Roosevelt's prewar policies, including America Firsters, pacifists, and German Bundists, were arraigned on an ex post facto accusation of sedition. It's unknown who was behind it, but it's likely to have been Harry Hopkins, with his deep admiration for everything Stalinesque. But so thin was the government's case, and so absurd its presentation, that the defendants themselves began laughing out loud at some of the questions. At that point the judge -- gutsier than many current examples -- demanded one piece of solid evidence from the prosecution. When none was forthcoming, he stopped the trial and dismissed all charges.

 

 

If the FDR administration couldn't pull it off, it's my contention that the Obama administration can't either. We have an interesting conception here: a new twist on the ancient show trial formula, one truly worthy of Daley's Chicago. This is the "carom" show trial, in which the true target is not the defendant, but a third party not even present. It's much like striking a ball on the pool table in the hopes of knocking another ball in.

 

 

And in that, it's probably far too complex and tricky an operation for Obama to manage. In virtually everything it tackles -- the recession, health care, foreign policy -- the Obama White House has developed a reputation for thinking large and accomplishing little. Odds are that the KSM show trial will be yet another example.

 

J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.

[Nur]

Obama's Fifth Category: The "Untriable"

 

By William Fisher,

 

November 26, 2009 "t r u t h o u t" Nov. 24, 2009 -- In his talk at the National Archives in May, President Obama referred to five categories of prisoners currently held at Guantanamo Bay.

 

First, there are those who have violated American criminal laws and will be tried in federal courts. There may be as many as a dozen men in this category, five of whose trials were announced last week, including that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

 

Second, there are detainees who violated the laws of war and who will be tried by the "new and improved" military commissions. Five prisoners were also designated for such trials last week and there is speculation that there are perhaps 25 more who fall into this category.

 

The third group consists of 21 detainees who have already been released by the courts.

 

Fourth, there are believed to be some 90 prisoners who are cleared for release and who can be transferred safely to other countries if such countries can be found.

 

So what is this "fifth category" of detainees? It consists of prisoners who are thought too dangerous to release, but who cannot be brought to trial.

 

According to The Washington Post, quoting an unnamed official, there are some 75 prisoners in this "fifth category." And the administration's position is that these people are untriable because the evidence against them was obtained through torture or because public trials would involve and potentially expose an unacceptable volume of classified material.

 

Which leaves the administration with the question of what to do with these people.

 

The Obama administration gave the human rights community apoplexy when it referred to "preventive detention." Now, it is simply saying that it's not going to seek any additional authority from Congress for such preventive detention. Which perhaps gives us a clue to the approach the administration has in mind. In a study by the Obama-friendly Center for American Progress, analyst Ken Gude suggests that the Obama administration "incarcerate detainees convicted in US criminal courts in maximum-security US prisons and transfer those who will remain in military custody to Bagram prison in Afghanistan."

 

That latter group would presumably include the untriable. Which appears to create a neo-GITMO at Bagram in Afghanistan.

 

In an effort to make sense out of this maze of legal confusions, I contacted a group of people I consider to be some of the best minds in constitutional law. In my simplistic layman's way, I questioned the assertion that certain people can't be tried and opined that it seemed to me that anyone who is accused of a crime can - should, must - be tried for that crime, and can not be held indefinitely without a trial.

 

Here are some of their responses:

 

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild: The 75 aren't even being accused of crimes. If there isn't enough evidence against them besides statements that have been tortured out of them, they should be released. Judges and prosecutors who have tried terrorism cases in the United States say that the Classified Information Procedures Act effectively protects classified material. If there is probable cause to believe that someone has committed a crime, he should be charged and tried. If not, he should be released. Indefinite detention violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty the United States has ratified which makes it part of US law.

 

Jameel Jaffer, director of the National Security Program for the American Civil Liberties Union: We should be very skeptical of the proposition that there are prisoners who can't be prosecuted but are too dangerous to release. The United States has sweeping detention authority under both domestic law and international humanitarian law - authority that is broad enough to reach both terrorists and battlefield combatants. The criminal laws have been used to successfully prosecute not only people who have planned terrorist attacks but also people who have attended training camps or raised money for terrorist groups.

 

In criminal trials, the government can protect intelligence sources and methods by relying on the Classified Information Procedures Act. It's true that federal courts are unlikely to allow the government to rely on evidence derived from torture, but that's a problem with the government's evidence, not a problem with the courts. The courts reject that kind of "evidence" not only because torture is illegal but because evidence derived from torture is unreliable. And if such evidence is too unreliable to justify detention after trial, it's surely too unreliable to justify detention without trial.

 

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights: I do not think there is any place for preventive detention in a country that claims it is a democracy under the rule of the law. We opposed it under Bush and it looks no more legal when rewrapped by Obama. The constitution and international law mandates that people be charged and tried or released. The claim that some GITMO detainees can't be tried is a pretext that will usher in a scheme that is contrary to 225 years of US law. There is no middle ground when it comes to human freedom. The claim that some GITMO detainees can be held without charges and trial is an assertion I hoped never to hear in a country claiming it acts under the rule of law. Preventive detention is the road to perdition. It sets a precedent that will haunt our justice system for all time.

 

Gabor Rona, international legal director of Human Rights First: The notion that we can hold GITMO detainees under the laws of war is wrong - a misapplication of those laws. There is presently not one GITMO detainee whose detention is authorized by the laws of war. Only domestic law governs detention in wars that are not between two or more states. For that reason, and because the US does not have an administrative detention scheme (which I think would necessarily be unconstitutional, although not necessarily in violation of international human rights law) all GITMO detainees must be either charged or released.

 

David Cole, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center: I don't think there is an obligation to try an enemy combatant for a war crime while the conflict is ongoing. For example, we did not try many Germans responsible for war crimes until the war was concluded, and issues of secrecy were less complicated. And I'm sure there were many we did not try at all. So I don't think there is an obligation to try. There is an obligation to ensure that anyone detained be provided a full and fair hearing on his status, that the definition of "enemy combatant" be defined narrowly, and that all detainees be treated humanely. But not that they be tried.

 

Brian J. Foley, visiting associate professor of law, Boston University: Ultimately this shows that the problem is that terrorism is something between crime and war. Though we know that the most effective way of combating terrorism groups is through police method, it seems akin to fighting "organized crime." Given that, then it seems that the court system we use should be geared more toward the criminal paradigm, which ultimately tests the government's claims that a person not wearing an enemy uniform has harmed, or is planning to harm, citizens.

 

The Obama Administration wants to be able to make those claims about people but not have them ever subjected to testing. We know that police often identify the wrong person; indeed, our court system itself is not perfect at correcting such government errors, as our history of wrongful convictions shows. So there needs to be testing of EVERY government claim that someone is planning an attack and/or is dangerous and therefore must be imprisoned. It is very often disputable whether someone is planning terrorist acts, ESPECIALLY when the only evidence is evidence gained by torture or is so-called "classified" evidence.

 

Under the Obama plan, a US government acting in error or in bad faith can detain forever anybody it claims is planning a terrorist attack. We have to be clear that the Administration is claiming a sweeping power with no check, a power - lifelong detention - that is rare in criminal law and rare in war (given that, unlike most wars, the GWOT will never end). The GWOT is Big Government's BFF ("best friend forever") and is the mortal enemy of democracy and human rights. This plan is the ultimate version of the government saying, "Just trust us" - a trust that is anathema to the spirit of the Founding Fathers,

 

The government appears afraid to take any risk at all that someone released might cause harm. But the assumption that someone might cause harm is assumption based on mere faith and belief, not on evidence. The bottom line is this makes no sense: the evidence gained by coercion is likely unreliable, and the secret evidence might be erroneous or even manufactured for political ends. Ultimately it's an epistemological question: How can you know someone is dangerous if it is based on evidence you obtained through coercion and is therefore unreliable, or if it is based on evidence you are afraid to have tested - again, we know our intelligence agencies are not perfect and make mistakes. The fact of the matter is that we have a system and a widely-held norm (among many nations and internationally) that says "prove it" to a government when the government wants to take away somebody's life or liberty. The real question at the heart of this whole dispute - a question that no one seems to want to ask openly, is, "Are we brave enough to adhere to such norm to prevent the many ills that can flow from giving the government the power to detain people indefinitely on its own say-so?" I don't think that the people arguing for this power are brave enough; I think they are cowards. Their cowardice will turn our country into something less than a democracy. "Land of the free, home of the brave" - freedom and bravery go together. You can't have freedom if you are not brave.

 

David Frakt, professor at Western State University Law School and former successful defense counsel to a Guantanamo detainee: The assertion that there are 75 detainees who are too dangerous to release, but can't be prosecuted, and therefore must be held indefinitely, defies common sense.

 

It is true that as a matter of the law of war that during an armed conflict, a person who is detained for taking part in the armed conflict may be held until the resolution of the conflict. Each of the detainees being held has been determined in a Combatant Status Review Tribunal to have been an "enemy combatant."

 

This does not mean that the detainee committed a crime. It could simply mean that the detainee fought against US or allied forces when they invaded Afghanistan or was prepared to do so if they had the opportunity. The government might feel that such detainees should not be released because they would return to the battlefield in an ongoing conflict. What is more troubling is the notion that some of the detainees are believed to have committed crimes but that such crimes can't be proven in a court of law. I find this hard to believe. Virtually any association with Al Qaeda is enough to support a federal charge of material support to terrorism, which would likely lead to a lengthy prison sentence. So why can't these people be tried - because they didn't commit a crime, or because the crimes they are believed to have committed can't be proved in court? If it is that the crimes can't be proven in court, why is that? Is it because of the government's belief that all of the evidence they have against an individual would be suppressed as the product of torture? In my opinion, if the only evidence we have is derived from torture, then we can't have any degree of confidence in the reliability of such evidence.

 

The government has shown a willingness to try several individuals who have admittedly been tortured based on the alleged existence of independent "clean" evidence, so the mere fact that someone was tortured is clearly not a bar to prosecution in the view of the Obama Administration. If there is independent corroborating evidence, then let the individuals be tried. If there is no non-torture derived evidence, then the government should not be able to even prove by a preponderance of the evidence that an individual should be held. We have seen repeatedly in the habeas corpus litigation that the government's evidence did not hold up to judicial scrutiny.

 

The Administration needs to come clean on who they believe fits into this category and why. Otherwise, we are just left to speculate.

 

Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee: You're right about the detention (but not necessarily right about the laws of war enabling us to hold them until "hostilities" come to an end - if by that you mean hostilities in the so-called Global War on Terror or GWOT).

 

The laws of war apply to the detainees variously (if at all! - don't forget that the GWOT framework is novel and legally and factually problematic in the extreme, and in my view and that of many other international lawyers and scholars it's utterly incorrect and inapplicable both in terms of the traditional law of war and in terms of human rights and constitutional law which apply even at all times even when there is no war).

 

Real wartime, i.e. battlefield detainees from Iraq or Afghanistan, are POWs and should rightly be seen as in a completely different legal category from civilians suspected of crime or simply rounded up and sent to GITMO, Bagram, or any of the secret prisons or interrogation sites used by the CIA, the government, and its allies. The former may be held until the end of those particular hostilities and the latter must be tried (supposedly under speedy trials as well as the other legal guarantees of fair trials) or promptly released.

 

You're right that indefinite detention without trial or legal due process of either category - of anyone, in fact - is outlawed both by the law of war and by international human rights law (as well as US constitutional law).

 

Moreover, there's no question that not all of the people now at GITMO are even accused of being criminals (war criminals or civilian criminals), all of which means that your question goes back again to the conceptual and legal framework with which we're viewing the situation; the legitimacy and legality of detention in general and indefinite detention in particular; and the individual facts of each person's case (to determine whether there are any legitimate legal grounds at all for detention and/or trial) - the interpretation of which becomes so much harder in light of the use of torture to coerce unreliable testimony.

 

So not even all the Constitutional experts agree precisely on the legal basis for putting a prisoner into that "fifth category" - the ones we're told can't be tried but are too dangerous to release. Largely because the Bush Administration tried to create its own law, the legal landscape is confused and confusing. But that doesn't help the Obama Administration. It still faces the question of what to do with these people.

 

In doing so, it faces a group - a very small group - of bad options. It can charge a person with a crime and risk being embarrassed by having tainted evidence thrown out of court. A court might also find that its evidence is insufficient or unreliable. A defendant might actually be exonerated or win on appeal - what then?

 

When, for one reason or another, you reject all but one of these options, you need then to accept that we are on our way to warehousing people.

 

For Americans, this is contrary to everything we've ever been taught about our system of justice.

 

William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for the Associated Press in Florida. Fisher also served in the international affairs area during the Kennedy administration. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more.

[Dhagax-Tuur]

S Allaikum, Nur.

 

What about the case of Aafia Siddiqui who is suffering in US prison for years, and there is no clarity in her imprisoning and suffering.

 

This is an article written about her in the Guardian.

 

===============

 

The mystery of Dr Aafia Siddiqui

 

By Declan Walsh, 24th Nov, 09.

 

A Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three is to stand trial in New York for attempted murder. But shadowy questions about her life remain – including her links to al-Qaida and her five 'lost' years

 

 

On a hot summer morning 18 months ago a team of four Americans – two FBI agents and two army officers – rolled into Ghazni, a dusty town 50 miles south of Kabul. They had come to interview two unusual prisoners: a woman in a burka and her 11-year-old son, arrested the day before.

 

Afghan police accused the mysterious pair of being suicide bombers. What interested the Americans, though, was what they were carrying: notes about a "mass casualty attack" in the US on targets including the Statue of Liberty and a collection of jars and bottles containing "chemical and gel substances".

 

At the town police station the Americans were directed into a room where, unknown to them, the woman was waiting behind a long yellow curtain. One soldier sat down, laying his M-4 rifle by his foot, next to the curtain. Moments later it twitched back.

 

The woman was standing there, pointing the officer's gun at his head. A translator lunged at her, but too late. She fired twice, shouting "Get the **** out of here!" and "Allahu Akbar!" Nobody was hit. As the translator wrestled with the woman, the second soldier drew his pistol and fired, hitting her in the abdomen. She went down, still kicking and shouting that she wanted "to kill Americans". Then she passed out.

 

Whether this extraordinary scene is fiction or reality will soon be decided thousands of miles from Ghazni in a Manhattan courtroom. The woman is Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three. The description of the shooting, in July 2008, comes from the prosecution case, which Siddiqui disputes. What isn't in doubt is that there was an incident, and that she was shot, after which she was helicoptered to Bagram air field where medics cut her open from breastplate to bellybutton, searching for bullets. Medical records show she barely survived. Seventeen days later, still recovering, she was bundled on to an FBI jet and flown to New York where she now faces seven counts of assault and attempted murder. If convicted, the maximum sentence is life in prison.

 

The prosecution is but the latest twist in one of the most intriguing episodes of America's "war on terror". At its heart is the MIT-educated Siddiqui, once declared the world's most wanted woman. In 2003 she mysteriously vanished for five years, during which time she was variously dubbed the "Mata Hari of al-Qaida" or the "Grey Lady of Bagram", an iconic victim of American brutality.

 

Yet only the narrow circumstances of her capture – did she open fire on the US soldier? – are at issue in the New York court case. Fragile-looking, and often clad in a dark robe and white headscarf, Siddiqui initially pleaded not guilty, insisting she never touched the soldier's gun. Her lawyers say the prosecution's dramatic version of the shooting is untrue. Now, after months of pre-trial hearings, she appears bent on scuppering the entire process.

 

During a typically stormy hearing last Thursday, Siddiqui interrupted the judge, rebuked her own lawyers and made strident appeals to the packed courthouse. "I am boycotting this trial," she declared. "I am innocent of all the charges and I can prove it, but I will not do it in this court." Previously she had tried to fire her lawyers due to their Jewish background (she once wrote to the court that Jews are "cruel, ungrateful, back-stabbing" people) and demanded to speak with President Obama for the purpose of "making peace" with the Taliban. This time, though, she was ejected from the courtroom for obstruction. "Take me out. I'm not coming back," she said defiantly.

 

The trial, due to start in January, is just one piece of a much larger ­ puzzle. It is a tale of spies and militants, disappearance and deception, which has played out in the shadowlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2001. In search of answers I criss-crossed Pakistan, tracking down Siddiqui's relatives, retired ministers, shadowy spy types and pamphleteers. The truth was maddeningly elusive. But it all started in Karachi, the sprawling port city on the Arabian Sea where Siddiqui was born 37 years ago.

 

Her parents were Pakistani strivers – middle-class folk with strong faith in Islam and education. Her father, Mohammad, was an English-trained doctor; her mother, Ismet, befriended the dictator General Zia ul-Haq. Aafia was a smart teenager, and in 1990 followed her older brother to the US. Impressive grades won her admission to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, later, Brandeis University, where she graduated in cognitive neuroscience. In 1995 she married a young Karachi doctor, Amjad Khan; a year later their first child, Ahmed, was born.

 

Siddiqui was also an impassioned Muslim activist. In Boston she campaigned for Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya; she was particularly affected by graphic videos of pregnant Bosnian women being killed. She wrote emails, held fundraisers and made forceful speeches at her local mosque. But the charities she worked with had sharp edges. The Nairobi branch of one, Mercy International Relief Agency, was linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in east Africa; three other charities were later banned in the US for their links to al-Qaida.

 

The September 11 2001 attacks marked a turning point in Siddiqui's life. In May 2002 the FBI questioned her and her husband about some unusual internet purchases they had made: about $10,000 worth of night-vision goggles, body armour and 45 military-style books including The Anarchist's Arsenal. (Khan said he bought the equipment for hunting and camping expeditions.) Their marriage started to crumble. A few months later the couple returned to Pakistan and divorced that August, two weeks before the birth of their third child, Suleman.

 

On Christmas Day 2002 Siddiqui left her three children with her mother in Pakistan and returned to the US, ostensibly to apply for academic jobs. During the 10-day trip, however, Siddiqui did something controversial: she opened a post box in the name of Majid Khan, an alleged al-Qaida operative accused of plotting to blow up petrol stations in the Baltimore area. The post box, prosecutors later said, was to facilitate his entry into the US.

 

Six months after her divorce, she married Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, at a small ceremony near Karachi. Siddiqui's family denies the wedding took place, but it has been confirmed by Pakistani and US intelligence, al-Baluchi's relatives and, according to FBI interview reports recently filed in court, Siddiqui herself. At any rate, it was a short-lived honeymoon.

 

In March 2003 the FBI issued a global alert for Siddiqui and her ex-husband, Amjad Khan. Then, a few weeks later, she vanished. According to her family, she climbed into a taxi with her three children – six-year-old Ahmed, four-year-old Mariam and six-month old Suleman – and headed for Karachi airport. They never made it. (Khan, on the other hand, was interviewed by the FBI in Pakistan, and subsequently released.)

 

Initially it was presumed that Siddiqui had been picked up by Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) spy agency at the behest of the CIA. The theory seemed to be confirmed by American media reports that Siddiqui's name had been given up by Mohammed, the 9/11 instigator, who was captured three weeks earlier. (If so, Mohammed was probably speaking under duress – the CIA waterboarded him 183 times that month.)

 

There are several accounts of what happened next. According to the US government, Siddiqui was at large, plotting mayhem on behalf of Osama bin Laden. In May 2004 the US attorney general, John Ashcroft, listed her among the seven "most wanted" al-Qaida fugitives. "Armed and dangerous," he said, describing the Karachi woman as a terrorist "facilitator" who was willing to use her education against America. "Al-Qaida Mom" ran the headline in the New York Post.

 

But Siddiqui's family and supporters tell a different story. Instead of plotting attacks, they say, Siddiqui spent the missing five years at the dreaded Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where she suffered unspeakable horrors. Yvonne Ridley, the British journalist turned Muslim campaigner, insists she is the "Grey Lady of Bagram" – a ghostly female detainee who kept prisoners awake "with her haunting sobs and piercing screams". In 2005 male prisoners were so agitated by her plight, she says, that they went on hunger strike for six days.

 

For campaigners such as Ridley, Siddiqui has become emblematic of dark American practices such as abduction, rendition and torture. "Aafia has iconic status in the Muslim world. People are angry with American imperialism and domination," she told me.

 

But every major security agency of the US government – army, FBI, CIA – denies having held her. Last year the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson, went even further. She stated that Siddiqui was not in US custody "at any time" prior to July 2008. Her language was unusually categoric.

 

 

To reconcile these accounts I flew to Siddiqui's hometown of Karachi. The family lives in a spacious house with bougainvillea-draped walls in Gulshan Iqbal, a smart middle-class neighbourhood. Inside I took breakfast with her sister, Fowzia, on a patio overlooking a toy-strewn garden.

 

As servants brought piles of paratha (fried bread), Fowzia produced photos of a smiling young woman whom she described as the victim of an international conspiracy. The US had been abusing her sister in Bagram, she said, then produced her for trial as part of a gruesome justice pageant. "As far as I'm concerned this trial [in New York] is just a great drama. They write the script as they go. I've stopped asking questions," she said resignedly.

 

But Fowzia, a Harvard-educated neurologist, was frustratingly short on hard information. She responded to questions about Aafia's whereabouts between 2003 and 2008 with cryptic cliches. "It's not that we don't know. It's that we don't want to know," she said. And she blamed reports of al-Qaida links on a malevolent American press. "Half of them work for the CIA," she said.

 

The odd thing, though, was that the person who might unlock the entire mystery was living in the same house. After being captured with his mother in Ghazni last year, 11-year-old Ahmed Siddiqui was flown back to Pakistan on orders from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. Since then he has been living with his aunt Fowzia. Yet she has forbidden him from speaking with the press – even with Yvonne Ridley – because, she told me, he was too traumatised.

 

"You tell him to do something but he just stands there, staring at the TV," she said, sighing heavily. But surely, I insisted, after 15 months at home the boy must have divulged some clue about the missing years?

 

Fowzia's tone hardened. "Ahmed's not allowed to speak to the press. That was part of the deal when they gave him to us," she said firmly.

 

"Who are they?" I asked.

 

She waved a finger in the air. "The network. Those who brought him here."

 

Moments later Fowzia excused herself. The interview was over. As she walked me to the gate, I was struck by another omission: Fowzia had barely mentioned Ahmed's 11-year-old sister, Mariam, or his seven-year-old brother, Suleman, who are still missing. Amid the hullabaloo about their imprisoned mother, Aafia's children seemed to be strangely forgotten.

 

That night I went to see Siddiqui's ex-husband, Amjad Khan. He ushered me through a deathly quiet house into an upstairs room where we sat cross-legged on the floor. He had a soft face under the curly beard that is worn by devout Muslims. I recounted what Fowzia told me. He sighed and shook his head. "It's all a smokescreen," he said. "She's trying to divert your attention."

 

The truth of the matter, he said, was that Siddiqui had never been sent to Bagram. Instead she spent the five years on the run, living clandestinely with her three children, under the watchful eye of Pakistani intelligence. He told me they shifted between Quetta in Baluchistan province, Iran and the Karachi house I had visited earlier that day. It was a striking explanation. When I asked for proof, he started at the beginning.

 

Their parents, who arranged the marriage, thought them a perfect match. The couple had a lot in common – education, wealth and a love for conservative Islam. They were married over the phone; soon after Khan moved to America. But his new wife was a more fiery character than he wished. "She was so pumped up about jihad," he said.

 

Six months into the marriage, Siddiqui demanded the newlyweds move to Bosnia. Khan refused, and grew annoyed at her devotion to activist causes. During a furious argument one night, he told me, he flung a milk bottle at his wife that split her lip.

 

After 9/11 Aafia insisted on returning to Pakistan, telling her husband that the US government was forcibly converting Muslim children to Christianity. Later that winter she pressed him to go on "jihad" to Afghanistan, where she had arranged for them to work in a hospital in Zabul province. Khan refused, sparking a vicious row. "She went hysterical, beating her hands on my chest, asking for divorce," he recalled.

 

After Siddiqui disappeared in March 2003, Khan started to worry for his children – he had never seen his youngest son, Suleman. But he was reassured that they were still in Pakistan through three sources. He hired people to watch her house and they reported her comings and goings. His family was also briefed by ISI officials who said they were following her movements, he said. (Khan named an ISI brigadier whom I later contacted; he declined to speak).

 

Most strikingly, Khan claimed to have seen his ex-wife with his own eyes. In April 2003, he said, the ISI asked him to identify his ex-wife as she got off a flight from Islamabad, accompanied by her son. Two years later he spotted her again in a Karachi traffic jam. But he never went public with the information. "I wanted to protect her, for the sake of my children," he said.

 

Khan's version of events has enraged his ex-wife's family. Fowzia has launched a 500m rupees (£360,000) defamation law suit, while regularly attacking him in the press as a wifebeater set on "destroying" her family. "Marrying him was Aafia's biggest mistake," she told me. Khan says it is a ploy to silence him in the media and take away his children.

 

Khan's explanation is bolstered by the one person who claims to have met the missing neuroscientist between 2003 and 2008 – her uncle, Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi. Back in Islamabad, I went to see him.

 

A sprightly old geologist, Faruqi works from a cramped office filled with coloured rocks and dusty computers. Over tea and biscuits he described a strange encounter with his niece in January 2008, six months before she was captured in Afghanistan.

 

It started, he said, when a white car carrying a burka-clad woman pulled up outside his gate. Beckoning him to approach, he recognised her by her voice. "Uncle, I am Aafia," he recalled her saying. But she refused to leave the car and insisted they move to the nearby Taj Mahal restaurant to talk. Amid whispers, her story tumbled out.

 

Siddiqui told him she had been in both Pakistani and American captivity since 2003, but was vague on the details. "I was in the cells but I don't know in which country, or which city. They kept shifting me," she said. Now she had been set free but remained under the thumb of intelligence officials based in Lahore. They had given her a mission: to infiltrate al-Qaida in Pakistan. But, Siddiqui told her uncle, she was afraid and wanted out. She begged him to smuggle her into Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban. "That was her main point," he recalled. "She said: 'I will be safe with the Taliban.'"

 

That night, Siddiqui slept at a nearby guesthouse, and stayed with her uncle the next day. But she refused to remove her burka. Faruqi said he caught a glimpse of her just once, while eating, and thought her nose had been altered. "I asked her, 'Who did plastic surgery on your face?' She said, 'nobody'."

 

On the third day, Siddiqui vanished again.

 

 

Amid the blizzard of allegations about Siddiqui, the most crucial voice is yet to be heard – her own. The trial, due to start in January, has suffered numerous delays. The longest was due to a six-month psychiatric evaluation triggered by defence claims that Siddiqui was "going crazy" – prone to crying fits and hallucinations involving flying infants, dark angels and a dog in her cell. "She's in total psychic pain," said her lawyer, Dawn Cardi, claiming that she was unfit to stand trial.

 

But at the Texas medical centre where the tests took place, Siddiqui refused to co-operate. "I can't hear you. I'm not listening," she told one doctor, sitting on the floor with her fingers in her ears. Others reported that she refused to speak with Jews, that she manipulated health workers and perceived herself to "be a martyr rather than a prisoner". Last July three of four experts determined she was malingering – faking a psychiatric illness to avoid an undesirable outcome. "She is an intelligent and at times manipulative woman who showed goal-directed and rational thinking," reported Dr Sally Johnson.

 

Judge Richard Berman ruled that Siddiqui "may have some mental health issues" but was competent to stand trial.

 

Back in Pakistan Siddiqui has become a cause celebre. Newspapers write unquestioningly about her "torture", parliament has passed resolutions, placard-waving demonstrators pound the streets and the government is spending $2m on a top-flight defence. High-profile supporters include the former cricketer Imran Khan and the Taliban leader Hakumullah Mehsud who has affectionately described Siddiqui as a "sister in Islam".

 

The unquestioning support is a product of public fury at US-orchestrated "disappearances", of which there have been hundreds in Pakistan, and deep scepticism about the American account of her capture. Few Pakistanis believe a frail 5ft 3in, 40kg woman could disarm an American soldier; fewer still think she would be carrying bomb booklets, chemicals and target lists.

 

But there are critics, too, albeit silent ones. A Musharraf-era minister with previous oversight of Siddiqui's case told me it was "full of bullshit and lies".

 

Two weeks ago the Obama administration introduced a fresh twist, when it announced that next year (or in 2011) five Guantanamo Bay detainees will be tried in the same New York courthouse, a few blocks from the World Trade Centre. One of them is Siddiqui's second husband, Ammar al-Baluchi, also known as Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, who stands accused of financing the 9/11 attacks.

 

But while the Guantanamo detainees will be tried for their part in mass terrorism, Siddiqui's case focuses on a minor controversy – whether she fired a gun at a soldier in an Afghan police station. And so the big questions may not be probed: whether the ISI or CIA abducted Siddiqui in 2003, what she did afterwards, and where her two missing children are now. In fact the framing of the charges raises a new question: if Siddiqui was such a dangerous terrorist five years ago, why is she not being charged as one now? A senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of strict anonymity, offered a tantalising explanation.

 

In the world of counter-espionage, he said, someone like Siddiqui is an invaluable asset. And so, he speculated, sometime over the last five years she may have been "flipped" – turned against militant sympathisers – by Pakistani or American intelligence. "It's a very murky world," he said.

 

"Maybe the Americans have no charges against her. Maybe they don't want to compromise their sources of information. Or maybe they don't want to put that person out in the world again. The thing is, you'll never really know."

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This was in the G2 supplement of the Guardian.