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| Dr. Aafia Siddiqui |
Pakistani neuroscientist Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been imprisoned in a US prison for more than a decade. Recently, claims have been circulating on social media that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been released.
However, fact-checking organization Rumor Scanner reported in a report that the claim that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was released is not correct and the pictures circulated are of Palestinian prisoners released after the ceasefire came into effect. In fact, Aafia's lawyer requested Aafia's apology from the recently departed US President Joe Biden, but no decision was made by Biden.
An investigation into this matter found no information or evidence from the media or reliable sources to support the claim that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was released.
However, according to a news report published on Sky News, a UK-based media outlet, on January 18, Aafia Siddiqui's lawyer has submitted a dossier to outgoing President Joe Biden, hoping he will pardon her, because in his opinion this is a clear miscarriage of justice. For this, Biden had time until the inauguration of the next US President Donald Trump, i.e. until January 20.
As of the publication of the Sky News report, Biden has granted 39 pardons and commuted 3,989 sentences.
But there is no news about pardoning Aafia Siddiqui. In this regard, when examining the X account of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, it is seen that he posted a post on January 20 that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been refused a pardon by Joe Biden. That is, Joe Biden has not pardoned Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.
A few hours later, in the early hours of today (January 21), he posted another screenshot on his X account, saying, ‘Incompetent and inhumane: They can’t do anything right: Biden’s website still says Aafia’s pardon is pending and I never gave them the address they sent the denial letter (to pardon Dr. Aafia Siddiqui), I gave up on that address 4 years ago…’
However, later, Rumor Scanner searched the website of the US Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney with the case number of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s pardon application and found that the status had been updated as of yesterday (January 20) and the pardon application had been rejected.
In addition, a search for the images circulating demanding Aafia Siddiqui’s release found an attachment to one of the images discussed in a news report published on the website of the UK-based media outlet Middle East Eye on January 20.
The report says that the photo is of a Palestinian prisoner released after the ceasefire in Gaza. The same information is also known from several other media sources. It is also known that the prisoner was released in the early hours of January 20 and is meeting with relatives.
In addition, the other photo circulated claiming to be a photo of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is found on the Reuters website in the list of the best photos of the day on January 20.
The photo is said to show a Palestinian prisoner released from an Israeli prison as part of the Gaza crisis and the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, being welcomed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in Ramallah.
In other words, the circulated photos are not of Afia Siddiqui either. Therefore, the claim that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been released is false.
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