When you Google the most wronged woman in the world, the first few search results you'll see will be about Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. The Most Wronged in the World was the title first given to Dr. Aafia by a British Journalist, Yvonne Ridley. Dr. Aafia is a neuroscientist with degrees from MIT and Brandeis University and mother of three, who went missing in the year 2003 and five years later in 2008, she was found in Ghazni, Afghanistan. 

She was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of US officials and was brought to the Southern District court in New York to face trial. She was sentenced to eighty-six years in the Carswell Medical Center, Texas.

As the United States continues to need solidarity against terrorist groups around the world, proper attention to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s case can be a step in the right direction in recovering the relationship Pakistan’s public has with its own government and the United States.Siddiqui’s disappearance from 2003 to 2008 is still a mystery today. She was never charged with any terrorism offenses in US courts and her association or link to al-Qaeda has never been established in a court of law.

From 2003 to 2008 the US government tried to find her role in many al-Qaeda schemes but was unable to indicate any specific role in those plans. In the Uzair Paracha case, she was accused of providing support to al-Qaeda by creating a mailbox for an al-Qaeda member in Maryland. Later she was cleared as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. In 2004, The Wall Street Journal also reported that United Nations prosecutors thought al-Qaeda might have sent Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to Liberia on a secret mission in 2001 to trade diamonds, in which US officials concluded “no persuasive evidence” existed.

The eighty-six-year sentence for attempted murder without premeditation as well as suspicion of any affiliation or links with terrorist organisations is considered inhumane by many human rights violation activists, especially after being declared mentally unwell. Her status shows she still experiences Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and schizophrenia.

Currently, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui can either be repatriated through a presidential pardon or by Pakistan filing a request on compassionate grounds. Both countries can work together to ensure Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s case benefits everyone, especially the United States.

It is a request for Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan (who included Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s repatriation in his 2018 Naya Pakistan Manifesto before being elected in 2018, and who, in a 2019 interview, shortly after his meeting with United States President Donald Trump, mentioned Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s case and his administration’s commitment to negotiating her release.) to demand Dr. Aafia's release.