Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has reportedly been assaulted by a fellow inmate in a high-security Texas prison where she is serving an 86-year sentence.
The attack has made her bound to a wheelchair, she has sustained wounds to her face and body after the inmate threw a mug of scalding hot coffee on her, according to her lawyer Marwa Elbially.
Aafia nearly lost her eyesight in the attack which Elbially came to know about when she visited her client. In a statement, the lawyer has said that Aafia had been complaining about harassment for a long time, but the US jail official chose to ignore her problems.
Aafia serves the sentence at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswell in Texas. Council of American-Islamic Relation (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group in the United States, has described the attack as “brutal.”
It issued a statement on Thursday, calling on the FMC and the US government “to ensure the safety of Dr. Siddiqui, who we believe is unjustly imprisoned for a crime that she did not commit.” The advocacy group also provided the details of the attack.
It said, “Only July 30, 2021, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was reportedly attacked in her cell by another inmate. The inmate smashed a coffee mug filled with scalding hot liquid into Dr. Siddiqui’s face. After the attack, Dr. Siddiqui was unable to get up and was taken out of her cell in a wheelchair.”
“Since the attack, Dr. Siddiqui was forced into solitary confinement which she remains in until today. Her lawyer, Marwa Elbially, has been meeting in person with Dr. Siddiqui since January 2021 after several years of silence from her and the US authorities, in which the public and her family doubted whether she was still alive,” it further added.
