Pakistani woman languishing in Bagram
ISLAMABAD, July 6: British journalist Yvonne Ridley called for help on Sunday for a Pakistani woman she believes is being held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years.“I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her,� Ms Ridley said at a press conference, urging Pakistanis to help her.Ms Ridley, who has come to Pakistan to appeal for help, said the case came to her attention when she read the Enemy Combatant, a book by former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg. After being seized in February 2002 in Islamabad, Mr Begg was kept in detention centres in Kandahar and Bagram for about a year before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. He recounted his experiences in the book after his release in 2005.
Ms Ridley read the text from the book’s section covering Mr Begg’s stay in Bagram: “I began to hear the chilling screams of a woman next door… Why have you got a woman next door? They told me there was no woman. But I was unconvinced. Those screams echoed through my worst nightmares for a long time. And I later learned in Guantanamo, from other prisoners, that they had heard the screams too.�
She said the account had been corroborated by four Arabs who had escaped from Bagram in July 2005.. “While on the run, one not only confirmed he had heard a woman’s screams, but said he had seen her.�
Ms Ridley, who was detained in Afghanistan for 10 days by the Taliban in September 2001, said, “My story made international headlines, front page pictures and major stories on TV. But there has not been one word, not one paragraph about Prisoner 650 -- the ‘grey lady’ of Bagram, a murderous detention facility under control of US military and intelligence services.�
Demanding her immediate release from US military’s detention, Ms Ridley said: “We don’t know her identity, the state of her mind, the extent of the abuse or torture. What I do know is that this would never happen to a western woman. Don’t they value a Muslim woman. Is her life worthless?�
She urged every Pakistani to ring America, ask them who Prisoner 650 was. What was her crime? Who else was being held illegally? How many secret detention centres were there?
Ms Ridley’s colleague Saghir Hussain gave details about other people of the country who had ‘disappeared’.
“All, like the grey lady of Bagram, have been illegally abducted by secretive intelligence agencies. They began disappearing in 2001 during the so-called war on terror,� he said.
Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan demanded that the government should hold an investigation into the case. “What has the sovereign parliament done about the missing persons?� he asked.
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