Dr Aafia Siddiqui has been assaulted by a fellow inmate in a high-security Texas prison where she is serving an 86-year sentence. After the attack she became wheelchair bound and was forced into solitary confinement.
She has sustained wounds to her face and body after the inmate threw a mug of scalding hot coffee on her, according to her lawyer Marwa Elbially.
Aafia nearly lost her eyesight in the attack which Elbially came to know about when she visited her client.
In a statement, the lawyer has said that Aafia had been complaining about harassment for a long time, but the US jail official chose to ignore her problems.
Aafia serves the sentence at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswell in Texas.
Council of American-Islamic Relation (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group in the United States, has described the attack as “brutal.”
It issued a statement on Thursday, calling on the FMC and the US government “to ensure the safety of Dr Siddiqui, who we believe is unjustly imprisoned for a crime that she did not commit.”
The advocacy group also provided the details of the attack.
It said “Only July 30, 2021, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was reportedly attacked in her cell by another inmate. The inmate smashed a coffee mug filled with scalding hot liquid into Dr. Siddiqui’s face. After the attack, Dr. Siddiqui was unable to get up and was taken out of her cell in a wheelchair. Since the attack, Dr. Siddiqui was forced into solitary confinement which she remains in until today. Her lawyer, Marwa Elbially, has been meeting in person with Dr. Siddiqui since January 2021 after several years of silence from her and the US authorities, in which the public and her family doubted whether she was still alive.”
The statement quoted Elbially as saying that during her visit she saw visible burns around Aafia’s eyes, “an approximately 3-inch scar near her left eye, a wound on her right cheek covered in toothpaste and a small piece of paper, and bruises on her right arm and legs.”
“The fact that I’m not blind is a miracle from Allah,” said Dr Aafia Siddiqui over the phone to her lawyer, according to the Cair statement.
How Aafia was sentenced
A New York court sentenced Dr Aafia to 86 years in prison in September 2013. She was accused of attempting to shoot the US soldiers in Afghanistan’s province of Ghazni in 2008.
The authorities claim Aafia was arrested in Afghanistan and then flown to the US on August 4, 2008. Aafia’s trial began in January 2010.
In 2018, there were reports that the US government was ready to release in exchange for Dr Shahid Afridi, who helped the CIA traced Osama Bin Laden, but the foreign office rejected such reports. Earlier, it was rumoured that the US was willing to exchange Aafia for Remand Davis, the CIA contractor who killed three people in Lahore.
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