All-out diplomatic efforts to bring Aafia Siddiqui home: Qureshi

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Saturday that the government will make all efforts on diplomatic level bring Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three jailed in the US for almost a decade, back to Pakistan.

The foreign minister said so while speaking to newsmen in Multan. “We will do whatever we could on diplomatic level to bring back Aafia Siddiqui,” he said.

Qureshi said Aafia’s family would be facilitated if she serves rest of her term in Pakistan. He also denied any offer made by the US in the past to free the incarcerated Pakistani neuroscientist in exchange for the release of Raymond Davis, a CIA operative who gunned down two men in Lahore in 2011.

The minister earlier this week also promised to provide legal assistance to Dr Aafia.

Dr Aafia has been in prison since 2010 on charges of attempted murder and assault on US military personnel during an interview with US authorities in Ghazni, charges which Siddiqui denies. She was sentenced to 86 years in prison at the Federal Medical Centre, Carswell, Fort Worth in Texas.

The Pakistani government had raised the issue of “respecting the human and legal rights” of Dr Aafia Siddiqui with US Ambassador Alice Wells who visited Islamabad on November 7.

“Government of Pakistan has been raising the issue of Dr Siddiqui with US authorities regularly. Pakistan’s CG (consul general) in Houston pays Consular visits to her, periodically, to inquire about her well-being and conveys her messages to Dr Aafia’s family if any,” the Foreign Office had said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The issue of respecting the human and legal rights of Dr Siddiqui was also raised in the meeting at MoFA with Ambassador Alice Wells on November 6,” it confirmed.

“The US side has promised to look into our request.”