The US administration has given Dr. Fowzia Siddique a visa to see her sister, Dr. Aafia Siddique, who is serving a sentence in a case brought against her for allegedly working for a terrorist organization.
It was revealed before the Islamabad High Court by Additional Attorney General Munawar Iqbal Dougal during a hearing on the subject of Aafia’s release from US incarceration and repatriation to Pakistan.
According to the government lawyer, Fowzia Siddique has been granted a five-year visa, and the two sisters will meet between May 29 and May 31. According to reports, she and her lawyer Cladio Smith will visit with her sister at the US prison facility.
The court ordered the Minister of Foreign Affairs to arrange for Aafia Siddique to have a psychological evaluation by a qualified outside physician during the hearing. Additionally, it instructed the government to deliver Aafia’s records and information to his attorney, who will promise not to use it improperly.
The judge then postponed the hearing until June 30.
After being found guilty by a US court of seven counts of attempted murder and assault against US military personnel in Afghanistan, the Pakistani scientist, who is also a US citizen, is currently serving an 86-year jail term.
Also read: Dr Aafia Siddiqui dead or alive?
Siddiqui was born in Pakistan to a Sunni Muslim family. For a period from 1990, she studied in the United States and obtained a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University in 2001.
She returned to Pakistan for a time following the 9/11 attacks and again in 2003 during the war in Afghanistan. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad named her a courier and financier for al-Qaeda, and she was placed on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations’s Seeking Information – Terrorism list; she remains the only woman to have been featured on the list. Around this time, she and her three children were allegedly kidnapped in Pakistan.
Five years later, she reappeared in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and was arrested by Afghan police and held for questioning by the FBI. While in custody, Siddiqui allegedly told the FBI she had gone into hiding but later disavowed her testimony and stated she had been abducted and imprisoned.
