Lawyers demand Aafia repatriation

LAHORE - PML-N lawyers have called for immediate extradition of Dr Aafia Siddiqui from America and asked the government to employ every means in this direction.
The PML(N) Lawyers Forum at the GPO Chowk outside the LHC premises here Friday held a demonstration. Led by MNA Ch Naseer Ahmad Bhutta, Khwaja Mahmood Ahmad, Wali Muhammad Khan, Ghulam Haider Alghazali and Waseem Butt and lawyers chanted slogans for the release of Dr Aasfia and her two children who were picked up in 2005 from Karachi and later on handed over to the American authorities in Afghanistan. Dr Aafia, who earlier has been shifted to the Texas Psychological facility for treatment was allowed to meet a Pakistani team led by Senator Mushahid Hussain during which she had pleaded for not being guilty in the accusations levelled by the American agencies of firing at US marines.
Carrying placards, banners and flags, the protesting PML(N) lawyers stayed at the Chowk for about two hours during which Ch Naseer Ahmad Bhutta, Khwaja Mahmood and others also spoke.
They accused the former president Pervez Musharraf of receiving heavy sum of dollars in return for giving Dr Aafia in custody of America. The speakers regretted that despite an elected and democratic government was in place, the same old policies of Musharraf era were being pursued in which the victims were still victims and the country’s interest were kept lower to that of American. They stressed on the government to utilise diplomatic and other channels to get Dr Aafia back.
Waseem Butt said the sitting government came to power with the public mandate and the people expected it to take bold decisions to protect the citizens. It is an elected government which needed to demonstrate different from what the last government had been doing to protect interests of America, he said adding, Pakistan would come under great harm if the interest of protecting life of the citizens as enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan, was not served. Butt said Dr Aafia had pleaded for not being guilty and the government of Pakistan must come to her legal and diplomatic help to obtain her return from America and then deciding before any further action, should study what law of land says on the charges America has levelled against her.