ISLAMABAD, Oct 18 (AP) \u2014 Pakistan\u2019s prime minister has written to U.S. President Joe Biden to request the release of a Pakistani woman who is serving an 86-year prison sentence in the U.S. for terrorism charges, a government lawyer told a court on Friday.<\/p>\n
The letter from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was submitted to a court in Islamabad that was hearing a petition from the sister of Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained neuroscientist who was convicted in 2010 on charges including attempting to kill U.S. nationals.<\/p>\n
Siddiqui became a terrorism suspect after she left the U.S. and married a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. She was wounded during a confrontation with U.S. authorities in Afghanistan in 2008. Witnesses say she shot at the Americans.<\/p>\n
According to a copy of Sharif\u2019s letter, dated Oct. 13, seen by The Associated Press, the prime minister informed Biden that the woman had already served 16 years in prison.<\/p>\n
He wrote that the matter deserved \u201cto be viewed with compassion.\u201d Sharif said over the years, numerous Pakistani officials paid consular visit to her and raised serious concern about the treatment she received, which severely impacted her already fragile mental and as well as frail physical health.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, they fear that she could take her own life,\u201d Sharif wrote about the assessment of the Pakistani officials.<\/p>\n
\nHe asked Biden to accept her sister\u2019s clemency petition and order her release on humanitarian grounds.<\/p>\n
Siddiqui\u2019s \u201cfamily, and millions of my fellow citizens join me in seeking your blessings for a favorable outcome of this request,\u201d he told Biden in the letter.<\/p>\n
Siddiqui\u2019s family has long maintained that she disappeared from Karachi in 2003 and blamed the government of former dictator Pervez Musharraf for secretly handing her over to U.S. officials.<\/p>\n
Musharraf was in power when Pakistan became an ally of the U.S. in the war on terror after the 9\/11 attacks. His government arrested dozens of suspects ad handed them over to various governments, including Washington.<\/p>\n
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ISLAMABAD, Oct 18 (AP) \u2014 Pakistan\u2019s prime minister has written to U.S. President Joe Biden to request the release of a Pakistani woman who is serving an 86-year prison sentence in the U.S. for terrorism charges, a government lawyer told a court on Friday. The letter from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was submitted to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-250663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}