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<font size=4><b>Pakistani scientist guilty in US servicemen
attacks<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>By Luis Torres de la Llosa (AFP) <br>
<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jeYXwK8nyBU9mtr1J3NhJ0fnOYgA" eudora="autourl">
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jeYXwK8nyBU9mtr1J3NhJ0fnOYgA</a>
<br><br>
NEW YORK A US-educated Pakistani woman was found guilty Wednesday of
trying to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan.<br><br>
Aafia Siddiqui, 37, a neuroscientist trained at the prestigious
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was found guilty on all charges by
a jury in federal court.<br><br>
A family lawyer immediately announced an appeal, citing "prejudice
and bias."<br><br>
Siddiqui was accused of grabbing a rifle at an Afghan police station
where she was being interrogated in July 2008 and trying to gun down a
group of US servicemen.<br><br>
Although she was not charged with terrorism, prosecutors described her as
a would-be terrorist who had also plotted to bomb New York.<br><br>
Her lawyers tried to prove she was insane, but a judge ruled her fit to
stand trial.<br><br>
Tina Monshipour, an attorney for Siddiqui's family, said afterwards:
"This verdict is being subject to an appeal."<br><br>
"There were a lot of unfair decisions," Monshipour said.
"She was portrayed as a terrorist even if there were no terrorism
charges in this trial. This is one of those cases in which we see
prejudice and bias invade the courtroom."<br><br>
Siddiqui, wearing a white veil, repeatedly disrupted her trial with
outbursts at the jury, witnesses and her own lawyers, including claims
that she was a victim of Israel.<br><br>
After being found guilty, she responded in similar fashion, saying:
"This is a verdict from Israel, not America. The anger should be
directed where it belongs."<br><br>
The trial has drawn widespread attention because it is the most advanced
in a string of current cases being handled by US prosecutors in what is
frequently referred to as the "war on terror."<br><br>
Several other suspects in alleged bomb plots are working their way
through the system, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described
mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, is also due to be tried --
possibly in New York.<br><br>
A frail-looking woman who excelled in her US studies, Siddiqui featured
on a 2004 US list of people suspected of Al-Qaeda links. She is also said
to have married a relative of Mohammed, although this is
disputed.<br><br>
Prosecutors claimed that Siddiqui was arrested by Afghan police in the
town of Ghazni with notes indicating plans to attack the Statue of
Liberty and other New York landmarks.<br><br>
However, she was charged only with attempted murder.<br><br>
Prosecutors said she picked up a rifle in the police station where she
was being held and opened fire on US servicemen and FBI representatives.
She missed and was herself shot by one of the US soldiers.<br><br>
Defense lawyers argued there was no physical evidence, such as finger
prints or gunpowder traces, to show Siddiqui even grabbed the rifle, let
alone opened fire.<br><br>
Human rights groups have long speculated that Siddiqui may have been
secretly imprisoned and tortured at the US base in Bagram, Afghanistan,
during the five years prior to the 2008 incident.<br><br>
The US military has denied she was ever held at the base.<br><br>
Siddiqui was living in Pakistan when she vanished in March 2003. This was
at a time of intense efforts by US-backed Pakistani security forces to
root out Al-Qaeda, and relatives believe she was grabbed in one of these
operations.<br><br>
It remains unclear where she went during that period.<br><br>
Siddiqui appeared to refer to the rumors during her trial, protesting
during one of her outbursts: "If you were in a secret prison...
(where) your children were tortured."<br><br>
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.<br>
***************************************************<br>
<br>
</font><h2><b>The Trial of Aafia
Siddiqui</b></h2><font size=3>
<a href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20100203.html" eudora="autourl">
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20100203.html<br>
</a><a href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner">By JOANNE MARINER
<br>
</a>Wednesday, February 3, 2010 <br><br>
Aafia Siddiqui, the MIT-educated Pakistani woman on trial in federal
court in Manhattan for attempted murder, is now awaiting a verdict in her
case. After ten days of testimony in the trial, jury deliberations began
on Monday afternoon. As of Wednesday morning, the jury had not yet
reached a verdict.<br><br>
The events for which Siddiqui is on trial are dramatic, but even more
dramatic is the backdrop to the case. Siddiqui, who is believed to have
married alleged 9/11 plotter Ammar al-Baluchi in early 2003, disappeared
in Karachi, Pakistan, in March of that year. Her family claims that she
took a taxi to Karachi airport, together with her three children --
Ahmed, age 6, Mariam, age 4, and Suleman, age 6 months – and then
vanished.<br><br>
Al-Baluchi disappeared in April 2003 himself. A wanted terrorism suspect,
he was whisked into the custody of the Pakistani intelligence services,
who were working closely with the CIA in the "war on terror."
He didn't reappear until September 2006, when he and thirteen other
so-called "high-value detainees" were moved from secret CIA
detention to Guantanamo. <br><br>
Human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch thought that Siddiqui,
too, was likely being held in secret by the CIA. But while many other
"ghost detainees" reappeared in 2006 -- either at Guantanamo,
Bagram, or in the custody of other governments -- she did not.<br><br>
Her whereabouts remained a mystery until July 2008, when she and her
oldest son surfaced in the custody of the Afghan police, having been
arrested in Ghazni, Afghanistan. The day after her arrest, while she was
detained at a police station, she allegedly picked up an unattended rifle
and fired at a group of FBI agents, US soldiers, Afghan police and
translators. No one was hurt except Siddiqui herself; she was shot by one
of the soldiers. <br><br>
The details of those two days in July have been parsed through at trial
over the past two weeks. The jury has heard from eyewitnesses to the
incident, ballistics experts, and crime scene investigators. But crucial
parts of Siddiqui's story are missing.<br><br>
A trial's narrative is always tightly circumscribed by the rules of
evidence and the demands of relevance. In this instance, however, the
constraints of the trial narrative have seemed especially limiting. Not
only has the question of whether Siddiqui spent months or years in a
secret prison not been thoroughly explored, the fate of her two missing
children has not been clarified. <br><br>
<b>"If You Were in Secret Prisons"</b> <br><br>
To the extent that claims about a secret prison surfaced at trial, it was
largely because Siddiqui herself – sometimes in courtroom outbursts –
raised them. Siddiqui's defense lawyers did little to draw out
information about Siddiqui's possible CIA detention, and the government
clearly wanted the topic to go away.<br><br>
If Siddiqui's lawyers had wanted to explore the question, they faced two
major obstacles. First, the government was uncooperative; it refused to
provide any information about the Bush administration's system of secret
CIA detention, claiming that such information was classified. Second,
Siddiqui did not cooperate with her legal team, leaving them without a
possible firsthand source of information.<br><br>
The issue nonetheless arose on the very first day of trial. Captain
Robert Snyder, a US Army officer who was stationed in Ghazni at the time
of Siddiqui's arrest, was describing the documents that Siddiqui was said
to be carrying when she was arrested. For much of the morning, Siddiqui
had rested her head on the defense table, suggesting that she was not
paying close attention to the testimony. But as Snyder began listing the
writing on some of the documents –words like "dirty bomb,"
"lethal radiation," "deadly fallout," "Empire
State Building," "Brooklyn Bridge" – Siddiqui suddenly
interrupted him, upset.<br><br>
"If you were in secret prisons," she said, her voice growing
louder, "[and] your children were tortured ... " As the judge
motioned for her to be removed from the courtroom, she continued:
"This is not plans for New York City; I was never planning to bomb
it! You're lying!"<br><br>
The subject came up again the next week when Siddiqui herself was on the
witness stand, tense and uncomfortable under grilling by the prosecutor.
During direct examination by one of her defense attorneys, the topic of
secret prisons did not arise, but when the prosecutor started to discuss
the documents that had allegedly been in Siddiqui's possession, Siddiqui
interrupted her.<br><br>
"If they're in a secret prison, they see their children tortured in
front of them ... "<br><br>
"That's not responsive," the judge ruled, after the prosecutor
complained. "Strike the testimony."<br><br>
<b>"You Told Special Agent Sercer That You Had Been in Hiding for
Several Years"<br><br>
</b>Later in Siddiqui's cross-examination, the prosecutor came up with a
very different version of how Siddiqui spent her missing years.
Describing Siddiqui's conversations with an FBI agent who spent time with
her at Bagram Air Base while she was receiving medical care there, the
prosecutor challenged Siddiqui's story of secret detention.<br><br>
"At Bagram," the prosecutor insisted, "you told Special
Agent Sercer that you had been in hiding for several
years."<br><br>
The prosecutor got a chance to develop the story further when Special
Agent Sercer, an FBI intelligence analyst, took the stand. Asked whether
Siddiqui had discussed her whereabouts during the years before her 2008
arrest, Sercer said that Siddiqui had said she'd been in hiding.<br><br>
"She would move from place to place," Sercer said Siddiqui had
told her. "She married someone so that her name would be changed.
She stayed indoors a lot."<br><br>
Sercer's version of the story coincides with what Siddiqui's first
husband, from whom she divorced in 2002, has told journalists. He claims
that Siddiqui was seen at her house in the years between 2003 and 2008,
and that he himself saw her in Karachi.<br><br>
<b>A Diversion or a Crime<br><br>
</b>In his closing argument, the prosecutor dismissed Siddiqui's
references to torture and secret prisons, calling them "a classic
diversion." The case "isn't about that," he insisted: It's
about what happened in a police station in Ghazni, Afghanistan.<br><br>
But there's no doubt that as the members of the jury deliberate, they'll
be wondering about what happened to Siddiqui well before she arrived in
Ghazni. If the present trial is not the right place for solving that
conundrum, a better option should be found.<br>
<br>
<a name="bio"></a>Joanne Mariner is a lawyer with Human Rights Watch. Her
columns for FindLaw are available in
<a href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/">FindLaw's
archive</a><a name="bio"></a>.<br>
<br><br>
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