WASHINGTON, Aug 27: Pakistan has officially conveyed its concern to the US government on media reports about Aafia Siddiqui’s worsening health condition.
In a communication to the US government, Ambassador Husain Haqqani noted that according to these reports she was not receiving adequate medical care in the jail.
The ambassador urged the US government to take necessary steps for her immediate transfer to a hospital for proper medical treatment.
He also asked the US government to stop the humiliating body searches of the detainee before and after visits of her lawyers and the embassy officials.
The embassy also requested the US government to hand over the custody of her three children to Pakistan in case they were in the US custody.
US federal authorities, however, have informed Ms Siddiqui that one of her sons is in Afghan custody. The 11-year-old boy, whose name was not disclosed, is a US citizen and it is highly unusual for US authorities to leave a young American in foreign custody.
There is no news about her two other sons.
Ms Siddiqui, 36, has been in a US federal prison in Brooklyn, nursing bullet wounds.
Prosecutors say she was shot by a US army officer after she grabbed his rifle from the floor and pointed it at an officer.
Witnesses, however, told her lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp that Ms Siddiqui never lunged for a weapon and that they never heard rifle shots.
In Pakistan, Ms Siddiqui is seen as a devout Muslim but to US authorities she is a dangerous terrorist with expertise in bomb-making she learned while studying neuroscience in the United States.
But Ms Siddiqui’s dissertation adviser, psychology professor Paul DiZio described her research as an examination of how people learn, not bomb-making.
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