Madeleine and Maryam: A Tale of Two Toddlers

Madeleine and Maryam: A Tale of Two Toddlers

Maryam Siddiqui, daughter of Dr Aafia Siddiqui

On 3 May 2007, just days before her 4th birthday, British girl Madeleine McCann disappeared while on holiday with her parents and twin siblings in the Algarve region of Portugal. On 28 March 2003, another four year old girl, Maryam Siddiqui, disappeared in Pakistan alongside her mother and two siblings. Maryam reappeared at her home last week in equally  bizarre circumstances claiming she was kept in a “cold, dark room” for seven years, reportedly in Bagram. Apart from a few lone voices attempting to raise awareness about the case, there was international silence regarding the issue until the summer of 2008. Why? Because unlike Madeleine, Maryam’s kidnapping appears to be have been at the instigation of the US government.

On 3 May 2007, just days before her 4th birthday, British girl Madeleine McCann disappeared while on holiday with her parents and twin siblings in the Algarve region of Portugal. Over the subsequent months, the case received international media coverage with daily coverage in Britain, Portugal and across the world. In addition to official investigations by the Portuguese and British police forces, at least five firms of private investigators had been engaged by a British tycoon, a former Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent, US firms and a Portuguese lawyer, to carry out inquiries. Elaborate video reconstructions, televised pleas for assistance and endorsements by celebrities followed. With such global efforts to locate the missing child, it was not surprising that the name Madeleine McCann was the topic of conversation in coffee shops, hairdressers, schools and campuses across the world. Tragically, despite these efforts, Madeleine remains missing today.

It is worth delving into the background of this case to provide some context. On 7 July 2008, following a press conference in Pakistan led by British journalist Yvonne Ridley, the case of Maryam’s mother, Aafia Siddiqui began to receive mass international coverage and resulted in a series of political inquiries in Pakistan and the UK. After all, Siddiqui and her children had been missing for over five years in the most mysterious of circumstances. Within two weeks of the press conference, the US administration reported that Siddiqui had been arrested earlier that month by Afghani forces along with her then 11 year old son Ahmed, outside the governor of Ghazni’s compound, allegedly with manuals on explosives and ‘dangerous substances in sealed jars’ on her person. Siddiqui was later extradited to the US and despite a plethora of discrepancies in the evidence against her, was convicted in January 2010 of attempting to murder US personnel in Afghanistan. No terrorism charges were brought against her at any time.

Siddiqui and her lawyers have maintained throughout that she and her children were abducted in 2003 and detained in secret prisons since that time. Siddiqui alleges that she was tortured, raped and abused during this period and forced to walk naked over a desecrated copy of the Qu’ran

However, in late August 2008, the lies began to unravel. Firstly, Michael G Garcia, the US attorney general of the southern region of New York confirmed in a letter to Siddiqui’s sister, Dr Fowzia Siddiqui, that her son, Ahmed had been in the custody of the FBI since 2003 and that he was currently in the custody of the Karzai government in Afghanistan. Earlier the US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W Patterson had claimed that Washington had no information regarding the children. Ahmed was finally released to the custody of Siddiqui’s family in Pakistan in September 2009. He later gave a statement to police in Lahore that he had been held in a juvenile prison in Afghanistan for years. In February 2010 Ahmed described

On Sunday 4 April 2010, a twelve year old girl was brought by unidentified men to the family residence in Karachi. The girl told the Siddiqui family that her name was Fatima and that she could only speak English and Persian. Days later, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik revealed that a DNA test proved that the girl’s DNA matched that of her brother Ahmed and Siddiqui’s ex-husband Dr Amjad Khan, confirming that she was in fact, Maryam, the missing daughter of Aafia Siddiqui. Chairman of the Pakistani Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior, Senator Talha Mehmood, further divulged that Maryam was recovered from Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan where she was with an American man named ‘John’. He claims that she had been kept in a “cold, dark room” at the US airbase in Bagram for the past seven years.
 Siddiqui’s youngest child, Suleman – only six months old at the time of his disappearance remains unaccounted for. Rumours, apparently confirmed by Siddiqui’s lawyer Elaine Sharpe after her trial, circulated for years that he was killed at the time of his abduction.  Siddiqui was later shown a picture of her baby

Irrespective of the allegations against Dr Aafia Siddiqui, questions must be answered regarding the disappearance and apparent detention of her three children. The world was shocked when it emerged that teenagers were being held at Guantanamo Bay. Some of those, like Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, have matured into adults during their imprisonment and remain there to this day. What we are dealing with in this case are toddlers who have been treated as terror suspects.

That even now, with the lies of the US government finally unravelling, whilst Pakistan’s streets have been raging with protestors and with week-long vigils beginning in London

The tragic reality is that Maryam is not the first four year old girl to be detained in the War on Terror. An American four year old girl, Rahma Maldonado and Kenyan Hafsa Swaleh

We may never know the full truth and reality of what Ahmed, Maryam and Suleman have had to endure for the last seven years but Western media outlets must be true to the principles of investigative journalism and at least raise these difficult questions, no matter how distressing the answers may be. Madeleine McCann and Maryam Siddiqui were two toddlers, worlds apart, but who lived the same reality – abduction. For both, it was the worst of times. Why then the double-standard?

Fahad Ansari is the spokesman for JFAC