Pakistan confirms that an 11-year old girl, who has been in US custody for seven years and let loose in Karachi by unknown people, is the daughter of Aafia Siddiqui.Daily Times, quoted the country's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, confirming the girl, Maryam Khan, as the daughter of Aafia Siddiqui.
A US citizen and MIT graduate, Aafia Siddiqui, disappeared on a trip to Pakistan. Six years later, it was known that she had been kept at the Bagram US Airbase, in Afghanistan.
Reports of rape and torture shows she has been kept under inhumane conditions at the base. She was later transferred to the US and was charged with attempted murder and links with al-Qaeda. She was given a sentence of 40 years.
This is despite of the fact that Aafia's finger prints were not found on the weapon that she had supposedly used. She was convicted for firing at FBI agents and US military personnel in a police station in Afghanistan's Ghazni.
Chairman of the Senate's Standing Committee on Interior, Senator Talha Mehmood, slammed the US for keeping the child in a military jail in a cold, dark room for seven years.
He noted that the act is in violation of human rights, and threatened to stop cooperating with Washington in the region, should Afia Siddiqui not be returned to Islamabad.
Fauzia Siddiqui, Aafia's sister, following a meeting with Pakistani interior minister, expressed hope that the country's Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani would press for Aafi release in his trip to the US.
Aafia's sentence to jail has triggered protests in Pakistan, as millions of her supporters asked for the immediate release and return of Aafia, calling it "a question of honor for Pakistan."
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