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So-Called Sins Of The Mother and Father (Children in Detention)

By Alexa

After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's arrest in March 2003, Yusuf and Abed Al Khalid were reportedly transferred out of Pakistan in U.S. custody.  The children were allegedly being sent for questioning about their father's activities and to be used by the United States as leverage to force their father to co-operate with the United States.  A press report on March 10, 2003 confirmed that CIA interrogators had detained the children and that one official explained:

"We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children...but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care."

In the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, he indicates knowledge that his children were apprehended and abused: "They arrested my kids intentionally. They are kids. They been arrested for four months and they had been abused." (Source: Human Rights Watch)

The tangled web woven here appears to include the children of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who happens to be KSM's sister-in-law, as well.
Amiga Chacounne has tried valiantly to keep the children of KSM from being forgotten. See Where Are Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's Children? published about ten days ago for descriptions of the two children in CIA custody allegedly being menaced with insects:

Also according to Mohammed, he and Majid were detained in the same place where two of Khalid Sheik Mohammed's young children, ages about 6 and 8, were held. The Pakistani guards told my son that the boys were kept in a separate area upstairs, and were denied food and water by other guards. They were also mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.

I had read of this previously, in Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine. It's an old, but extremely effective technique of torture. When a suspect's child is threatened, this will often "break" the suspect into a blithering chatterbox who'll say whatever the torturer wants to hear. Not so with KSM. When interrogators reportedly stated "talk, or your kids are going to get hurt," KSM's alleged response was fine, let them to on to Allah, they'll be in a better place. There are different accounts of this exchange, and no way to verify (no one is going to admit this, ever, in our lifetimes), but there's also no reliable status report on the children of KSM.

They were in Pakistan. (I'm sorry for all the qualifiers, but much of this story is "alleged" or "reported.") Where are they now? No one knows. Their grandparents and extended family would like to know, and in this group, I had not previously included Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, because I didn't realize that she is married to the nephew of KSM. Dr. Aafia's husband is detained in Guantanamo and she is either at Bagram Air Force Base or in the United States in custody, depending on which reports you read over the last several days.

Since the date of my last report on Dr. Aafia, linked, August 25, 2008, her oldest child has apparently been released to her sister in Pakistan. Again, apparently. This child, 11 years, is known as Ahmed in documents up until the release, thereafter as Ali for a brief period, now as Muhammed.

Fouzia Siddiqui, sister of Aafia, states that the returned child is "mentally unfit and having night terrors."

She further said that her nephew Muhammad Ahmed had lost his memories and having nightmares. In response to another question, Dr Fouzia Siddiqui said that her family members do not expect any sympathy from USA adding that US law enforcement agencies officials are kept torturing innocent Afia. (Pakistani News)

Who is this boy? Does he remember his aunt or other family members he was repatriated to? That he witnessed the torture of Aafia, and that he was not given adequate food in Afghanistan are alleged:

According to documents described in court by lawyer Fink, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui told prison staff that she feared her son was being starved and tortured, and asked them to take food off her tray and send it to her son in Afghanistan.

Dr. Aafia was tortured and kept starved for years and years along with her kid son. The son is still in the Afghanistan with the barbaric Afghan security forces. [....] These slime balls are now torturing the Pakistani kid, and want to earn more bones from their masters in Washington. The more disgusting part is that they have their spineless cronies in Pakistan, who handed over Dr. Aafia and her three kids to them.

Dr. Aafia's oldest son was renditioned at age 5. He was detained at Bagram for 7 years, more than half his life. That a 12-year-old, especially one brought up in the hell on earth known as Bagram, wouldn't remember people or much of his life at 5 is understandable. But really, is this the same child? Is this boy in fact Dr. Aafia's oldest son?

Fouzia Siddiqui also demanded of the government to make arrangement for the repatriation of Dr. Afia's two other children, a five-year-old Sulman and 9-year-old Maryam.

She maintained that her sister Dr Afia Siddiqui is not a terrorist but a victim of terror.  

In reply to a question she said  "Advisor to the Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik and Secretary Interior Syed Kamal Shah have reassured her of their sincerest efforts both in locating and bringing Afia's two other children back to Pakistan.

Orale. Good luck with this. The youngest, Sulman, was only 7 months old at the time of his rendition. Learning only recently of the "connection" with KSM through marriage, I am even more concerned for the children of KSM and Dr. Aafia.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on October 08, 2008 (boomark / email).