By Tania Siddiqi
December 19, 2025
United Antiwar Coalition
For over two decades, political prisoner Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has been held captive without just cause, in prisons across the world. From 2003 until 2008, she was a ghost prisoner in CIA black sites in Afghanistan, including the notorious Bagram Air Base, where she was routinely beaten and violated.
According to Aafia’s attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, she is the only woman who underwent the full U.S. Rendition to Torture program. In 2010, Aafia, an innocent Pakistani citizen, was sentenced to 86 years in U.S. federal prison. Since then, she’s been carrying out her virtual life sentence at Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, the only federal medical prison for women in the U.S., infamously known as the “Hospital of Horrors.”
FMC Carswell – The Hospital of Horrors
Established in 1994, Carswell has an extensive history of subjecting incarcerated women to inhumane prison conditions. Countless prisoners receive inadequate treatment to meet their health-related needs. Among incarcerated women, Carswell is known as “Killswell” due to the frequency of preventable deaths caused by the prison’s medical neglect.
Carswell is also a site of systemic sexual abuse. According to a 2022 federal report on Just Detention website, from 2014 to 2018, “35 women at Carswell reported they were sexually assaulted by a staff member — the most of any federal women’s prison.” (tinyurl.com/3dj67m4u)
A Senate report found that from 2012 to 2022, Carswell prison staff sexually abused 22 women in federal custody, more than any prison during that decade. (wfaa.com, March 11, 2024)
Carswell employees who have been convicted of sexually abusing incarcerated women include, but are not limited to, a chaplain, Catholic priest, gynecologist, case manager and Federal Bureau of Prisons lieutenant.
Like many others at the Hospital of Horrors, Aafia’s ongoing health problems remain unaddressed, and she has been sexually abused countless times by prison staff. However, unlike most, Aafia is held at Carswell’s notorious Administrative Segregation Unit (Ad Seg), a section of the prison known to use even harsher forms of violence against incarcerated people.
Ad Seg – a prison within a prison
Ad Seg is a high-security unit that currently houses very few prisoners. The conditions in Ad Seg are functionally equivalent to solitary confinement: incarcerated people are severely restricted and entirely cut off from the rest of the prison. All services (for example, education, mental health and recreation) are provided within the unit. On the uncommon occasions when prisoners are required to leave Ad Seg, Carswell is completely shut down.
The self-contained nature of the unit, paired with the permissibility of Carswell prison staff to abuse incarcerated people, makes Aafia particularly vulnerable to attack. She has been in solitary confinement for over 15 years, longer than any person in a U.S. federal women’s prison.
Join the ‘Free Aafia Movement’
Earlier in March, on the online program “Surviving State Violence: The Case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and Incarceration in Women’s Prisons,” Kendra Drysdale, a Carswell survivor and the Dublin Prison Solidarity Coalition Advocacy Coordinator, shared the following about Aafia’s confinement conditions:
“I can only image what it’s like in what is basically the solitary confinement unit, the maximum-security unit where [Aafia] Siddiqui is held, and how scary it is. At least we had our sisterhood to protect us in some ways. But without having that, I cannot imagine how horrific it would be and what kind of treatment you would receive from staff that feel like they have all the power.” (View the entire program on youtube.com/watch?v=ZOGW633rRh0 and read more at https://iacenter.org/2025/03/29/surviving-state-violence-the-case-of-dr-aafia-siddiqui/ )
It is our duty to support the Movement to Free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and to demand her unconditional release from the Hospital of Horrors.
Free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui!
Free All Political Prisoners!
For media or to get involved with the Free Aafia Movement, contact Tania Siddiqi at tania.aafiamovement@gmail.com. For updates on Aafia’s case, follow the Aafia Movement on Instagram @aafiamovementofficial.
