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AMP Report – February 9, 2010
On guilty verdict of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
A jury in New York has found Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist once dubbed by the US media as Al-Qaeda Lady, guilty of attempted murder charges on all seven counts listed in the complaint against her. She was tried on charges of trying to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan on July 28, 2008.
The decision on February 3rd came two days after Dr. Siddiqui’s case was sent to the jury, which was composed of 7 women and five men, as soon as prosecution and defense lawyers wrapped up their closing arguments.
According to the prosecution, Dr. Siddiqui, 37, grabbed a US warrant officer’s rifle while she was detained for questioning in July 2008 at a police station in Ghazni and fired at FBI agents and military personnel as she was pushed down to the ground. None of the US soldiers or FBI agents were injured, but US-educated Dr. Siddiqui was shot. She was charged with attempted murder and assault and other crimes.
Prosecutors claimed that Siddiqui was arrested by the Afghan police in the town of Ghazni with notes indicating plans to attack the Statue of Liberty and other New York landmarks. However, she was not charged with terrorism but charged only with attempted murder.
During the trial, the prosecution admitted that there were no fingerprints on the gun she was supposed to have wrested from one of the soldiers. No bullets were recovered from the cell.
Although she was not charged with terrorism, prosecutors described Aafia as a would-be terrorist who had also plotted to bomb New York. In her closing arguments, defence attorney Linda Moreno accused the prosecutors of trying to play on the jury’s fears. “They want to scare you into convicting Aafia Siddiqui,” she said.
Here are few comments on the conviction of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui
(The Conviction of Aafia Siddiqui & the US Terror-Industrial Complex By Chris Hedges )
The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security does not come from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.
The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.…….
“It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism,” said Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network. “It is difficult to get a fair trial on any types of charges. The government is allowed to tell the jury you are a terrorist before you have to put on any evidence. The fear factor that has emerged since 9/11 has permeated into the U.S. court system in a profoundly disturbing way. It embraces the idea that we can compromise core principles, for example the presumption of innocence, based on perceived threats that may or may not come to light. We, as a society, have chosen to cave on fear.”…..
Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power…..
I do not know whether Siddiqui is innocent or guilty. But I do know that permitting jailers, spies, kidnappers and assassins to operate outside of the rule of law contaminates us with our own bile. Siddiqui is one victim. There are thousands more we do not see. These abuses, justified by the war on terror, have created a system of internal and external state terrorism that is far more dangerous to our security and democracy than the threat posed by Islamic radicals.
Read More: http://themuslim.ca/2010/02/09/the-conviction-of-aafia-siddiqui-the-us-terror-industrial-complex/
(The truth about U.S. justice By Yvonne Ridley)
….. Of course there has been a great deal of finger pointing and blame towards the jury in New York who found Dr Aafia guilty of attempted murder.
Observers asked how they could ignore the science and the irrefutable facts … there was absolutely no evidence linking Dr Aafia to the gun, no bullets, no residue from firing it.
But I really don’t think we can blame the jurors for the verdict - you see the jury simply could not handle the truth. Had they taken the logical route and gone for the science and the hard, cold, clinical facts it would have meant two things. It would have meant around eight US soldiers took the oath and lied in court to save their own skins and careers or it would have meant that Dr Aafia Siddiqui was telling the truth.
And, as I said before, the jury couldn’t handle the truth. Because that would have meant that the defendant really had been kidnapped, abused, tortured and held in dark, secret prisons by the US before being shot and put on a rendition flight to New York. It would have meant that her three children – two of them US citizens – would also have been kidnapped, abused and tortured by the US.
They say ignorance is bliss and this jury so desperately wanted not to believe that the US could have had a hand in the kidnapping of a five-month -old baby boy, a five-year-old girl and her seven-year-old brother.
They couldn’t handle the truth … it is as simple as that.
* Yvonne Ridley is a patron of Cageprisoners which first brought the plight of Dr Aafia Siddiqui to the world’s attention shortly after her kidnap in March 2003. The award-winning, investigative journalist also co-produced the documentary In Search of Prisoner 650 with film-maker Hassan al Banna Ghani which concluded that the Grey Lady of Bagram was Dr Aafia Siddiqui
Read More; http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/02/09/the-truth-about-us-justice/
(Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized By American Injustice - Stephen Lendman)
Carefully orchestrated, the trial (of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui) proceeded like numerous others, targeting innocent victims because of their faith, ethnicity, prominence, benevolent charity, activism, or other reasons for political advantage, ending with convictions and punitive incarcerations against innocent defendants, guilty of being Muslims in America at the wrong time when we're all just as vulnerable.
In a manipulated climate of fear, the same process repeats, using bogus charges, secret evidence, enlisted witnesses to cooperate, the defense prohibited from introducing exculpatory evidence, and proceedings carefully scripted to intimidate juries to convict.
Justice is again denied, Siddiqui another victim, a human tragedy, portrayed by the dominant media as a jihadist, and getting public sentiment to agree because disturbing truths are carefully suppressed.
Read More: http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman080210.htm
(‘Al-Qaeda Lady’ Dr. Aafia not charged with links to Al Qaeda but convicted of
trying to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan By Abdus Sattar Ghazali)
By keeping the focus on Ghazni, the prosecution avoided the main issue in Dr. Aafia’s case: Where was she from March 2003 to July 2008 when she suddenly appeared in US custody in Afghanistan.
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.
Another tragic aspect of Dr. Aafia’s case is that the mainstream US media has virtually ignored her trial while media from Pakistan was barred from the main courtroom.
As a matter of fact, there were four allegations, not one, that required deliberation:
1. The first allegation against Dr. Aafia: In 2003, US authorities alleged that she had links with Al-Qaeda. Throughout March 2003 flashes of the particulars of Dr. Aafia were telecast with her photo on American TV channels and radios painting her as a dangerous Al Qaeda person needed by the FBI for interrogation. At a news conference in May 2004, US Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that the FBI was looking for seven people with suspected ties to Al Qaeda. MIT graduate and former Boston resident Aafia Siddiqui was the only woman on the list.
2. The second allegation: The US authorities claimed on July 17, 2008, that Dr. Aafia was found to be in possession of some objectionable and dangerous material. According to US officials, Afghani police, acting on an anonymous tip that a foreign woman was planning terrorist activities, arrested Aafia Siddiqui outside the governor’s compound in Ghazni, and discovered in her purse bottles of liquids, bomb making instructions, and a map of New York City landmarks.
3. The third allegation: International human rights group, prior to July 17, 2008, alleged that Dr. Aafia was being held in secret prison. She was unlawfully abducted and sexually tortured. This needed to be addressed before moving on. This allegation was against the US and Pakistani authorities.
4. The fourth allegation: The US authorities alleged that she fired at some US soldiers, etc. while she was being interrogated, after her alleged arrest. This is the only allegation on which Aafia has been tried. In the pre-trial hearing on January 18 the prosecution admitted: Dr Aafia is not a member of al-Qaida. She has no links to any terrorist organization.
The question is why the FBI chose to charge her only with firing at the US soldiers and agents? Why she is not charged with links to Al Qaed? Why she is not charged with planning attacks on targets in New York? Remember, a map of New York land marks was found on her when she was taken into custody in Ghazni, according to prosecution. We may find answers to these questions in the post-9/11 trials of Muslims in the US. A number of Muslims were arrested on terror suspicion but never charged with terrorism or acquitted in terrorism charges. They were put on trial with flimsy charges of immigration violation, tax evasion or some other charges which have nothing to do with terrorism. Just two examples may suffice to prove my point:
Anwar Mahmood, a Pakistani immigrant, was picked up in October 2001 for taking photographs of an upstate New York reservoir. No terror-related charges were ever filed against him but investigators found him in minor violation of immigration law. After spending three years in jail, he was deported to Pakistan in August 2004 for violating immigration law.
In February 2007, a jury acquitted Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a Palestinian-American former professor at Washington's Howard University, of terror-related charges. Tellingly, in November 2007 he was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for refusing to testify in 2003 before a grand jury investigating the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Dr. Ashqar was convicted of criminal contempt and obstruction of justice.
Read More: http://www.opednews.com/articles/-Al-Qaeda-Lady-Dr-Aafia-by-Abdus-Sattar-Ghaza-100206-500.html
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