PESHAWAR, Nov 5: Yvonne Ridley, a journalist turned human rights activist, claimed that over 150 children, ‘sold out’ by the previous Pakistani regime, have been languishing in different prisons manned by the US marines in Afghanistan.

Ms Ridley, who embraced Islam after spending some weeks in a Kabul prison during the Taliban tenure and renamed as Mariam, was the first who revealed the presence of Dr Aafia Siddiqui in a US-manned prison in Kabul. Still wearing a tag inscribed with figure 650, number of a woman prisoner detained somewhere in a prison in Afghainstan.

Speaking at a function organized by the Institute of Regional Studies (IRS), a think-tank of Jamaat-i-Islami, here at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday, she alleged that Gen (retired) Pervez Musharraf’s regime had handed over scores of children, women and men to the US secret agencies against millions of dollars to prolong his dictatorship in the name of the so-called war on terror.

She said the US President George W Bush had been terrorising his own people in the name of 9/11 for the last seven years. She said the 9/11 had become a ploy in the hands of US administration to intimidate and frighten the American public, which did not know what had happened to the poor people of Afghanistan after the destruction of twin towers in their country.

She said Taliban had treated her like their sister during her detention in 2001 in Kabul. It was, she said, a great moment in her life which changed her entire life. She said she could not think of such a treatment in an US prison, where women were strip-searched by the security men.

She said the American had repeatedly abused Dr Aafia Siddiqui during her detention in Bagram airbase in Kabul. She said Pakistani secret agencies had handed over Dr Siddiqui and her three children to the FBI, which transported them to Kabul.

She said in March 2003, Pentagon had admitted that Dr Siddiqui along with her children was in the custody of its marines in Bagram airbase. But, she said, they didn’t release her.

She also showed the image of frail Dr Aafia Siddiqui, who according to her had been shot three times in Kabul by the US marines. She said that the US government had concocted a fake case against Dr Siddiqui in Afghanistan, but was trying her in New York under the American law, which was a mockery of human rights and rule of law.

She said she would fight for the rights of the missing children, women and men, who were actually detained somewhere in Afghanistan or any part of the world. She asked the Jamaat-i-Islami leaders to locate the missing children, who had developed some sort of psychological problems and rehabilitate them.

She denied that the historic victory of Barak Obama in US presidential election may trigger any kind of racial riots. She said: “Only 20 per cent US citizens carry passports. They have nothing to do with international affairs”.