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Aafia Siddiqui

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Aafia Siddiqui
ArrestedJuly 17, 2008
Ghazni, Afghanistan
Afghan National Police
CitizenshipPakistani
Detained at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn
Other name(s) Fahrem; Saliha; Feriel Shahin
Charge(s)i) Two counts of attempted murder of U.S. nationals, officers, and employees;
ii) Assault with a deadly and dangerous weapon;
iii) Carrying and using a firearm; and
iv) three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees.
StatusConvicted; awaiting May 6, 2010, sentencing.
OccupationNeuroscientist
SpouseMohammed Khan (1995–October 21, 2002);
Ammar al-Baluchi (2003–present)
ParentsMuhammad Salay Siddiqui (father); Ismet (née Faroochi) Siddiqui (mother)
ChildrenMohammad Ahmed/Ali Hassan (b. 1996);
Mariam Bint Muhammad (b. 1998); and
Suleman (b. September 2002)

Aafia Siddiqui (born March 2, 1972, in Karachi, Pakistan) is a Pakistani Muslim neuroscientist, accused of being an al-Qaeda member. In February 2010, she was convicted in New York City of assault with a deadly weapon, and attempting to kill U.S. soldiers and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who were seeking to interrogate her.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumna and Brandeis University Ph.D., and mother of three, she had disappeared in March 2003. Her disappearance followed the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, alleged chief planner of the September 11 attacks and the uncle of her second husband, and the subsequent issuance by the FBI of a global "wanted for questioning" alert for her. In 2004, U.N. investigators identified her as an al-Qaeda member, and the FBI said she was a "terrorist facilitator" and listed her as one of the seven "most wanted" al-Qaeda fugitives.

She resurfaced when she was arrested July 17, 2008, by the Afghan National Police. The following day, when U.S. military personnel congregated at the Afghan facility meeting-room where—without them knowing it—she was being held unsecured, she came out from behind a curtain, picked up an M-4 assault rifle at the feet of one of the soldiers, and fired two shots at them. She missed. An officer returned fire, hitting her in the torso, and she was subdued. Siddiqui was charged with two counts of attempted murder, armed assault, using and carrying a firearm, and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees. She was convicted in February 2010, in a Manhattan court, on all counts. She faces a minimum sentence of 30 years and a maximum of life in prison on the firearm charge, and could also get up to 20 years for each attempted murder and firearms charge, and up to 8 years on each of the remaining assault counts when she is sentenced on May 6, 2010.

Siddiqui's sister and mother have asserted that she does not have any connection to al-Qaeda, that the U.S. secretly detained her for five years, and that she was tortured and raped, all claims that the U.S. and Pakistan deny. After her conviction, thousands of people protested in Pakistan, and the Taliban threatened to kill a captured American soldier in retaliation.

Early life and education

Early life and family

Siddiqui is the youngest of three siblings. She was raised first in Zambia until the age of eight, and then in Karachi, Pakistan. Her father, Muhammad Salay Siddiqui, was a British-trained neurosurgeon, and her mother, Ismet (née Faroochi), is a now-retired Islamic teacher and social worker, who was prominent in political-religious circles. Her brother Mohammad Azi Siddiqui, an architect, and his wife, a pediatrician, live in Sugarland, Texas. Her sister, Fowzia Siddiqui, is a Harvard Medical School-trained neurologist married to Nassar Jamali, who also studied, as well as taught, at John Hopkins University, and worked in Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, before returning to Pakistan.

Houston and MIT; Muslim Students' Association

Siddiqui moved to Texas in the United States on a student visa in 1990, joining her brother. After attending the University of Houston for three semesters, she transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While at MIT, she lived in McCormick Hall and worked at the MIT libraries. In 1992, as a sophomore, Siddiqui received a Carroll L. Wilson Award for her research proposal "Islamization in Pakistan and its Effects on Women". As a junior, she received a $1,200 City Days fellowship through MIT's program to help clean up Cambridge elementary school playgrounds.

She was regarded as religious by her colleagues, and joined the Muslim Students' Association (MSA). Journalist Deborah Scroggins, writing for Vogue, reported that if Siddiqui:

was drawn into the world of terrorism, it may have been through the contacts and friendships she made in the early 1990s working for MIT's Muslim Student Association. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest and biggest Islamist movement, established the first MSAs in the country... and the movement's ideology continued to influence the MSA long after that. At MIT, several of the MSA's most active members had fallen under the spell of Abdullah Azzam, a Muslim Brother who was Osama bin Laden's mentor.... had established the Al Kifah Refugee Center to function as its worldwide recruiting post, propaganda office, and fund-raising center for the mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan... It would become the nucleus of the al-Qaeda organization.

Siddiqui solicited money for the Al Kifah Refugee Center. In addition to being an al-Qaeda charitable front and al-Qaeda’s U.S operational headquarters, tied to bin Laden, it advocated armed violence, one of its members had just killed Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990, and it was tied to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Through the MAS she met several committed Islamists, including Suheil Laher, its imam, who publicly advocated Islamization and jihad before 9/11. For a short time, Laher was also the head of the Islamic charity Care International, which reportedly collected funds for jihadist fighters.

When Pakistan asked the U.S. for help in 2003 in combating religious extremism, Siddiqui circulated the announcement with a scornful note deriding Pakistan for "officially" joining "the typical gang of our contemporary Muslim governments", closing her email with a quote from the Quran warning Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends. She wrote three guides for teaching Islam, expressing the hope in one: "that our humble effort continues ... and more and more people come to the of Allah until America becomes a Muslim land." She also took a 12-hour pistol training course at the Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club.

While she initially majored in Biochemical and Biophysical Studies at MIT, she graduated in 1995 with a BS in Biology. In February 1996, she wrote an article for the MIT information systems newsletter I/S entitled "Four Ways to get MITnet Applications for Macs and PCs".

Marriage and Brandeis

File:MohammedKhan1.jpg
Amjad Mohammed Khan, Siddiqui's first husband.

In 1995 she had an arranged marriage to anesthesiologist Amjad Mohammed Khan from Karachi, just out of medical school, whom she had never seen. They were married over the phone.

Her husband came to the U.S., and they lived first in Lexington, Massachusetts, and then in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Roxbury in Boston, as he worked as an anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She studied cognitive neuroscience in a Ph.D. program at Brandeis University. She gave birth to a son in 1996 (Mohammad Ahmed/Ali Hassan), and in September 1998 had a daughter (Maram Bint Muhammad); both are American citizens.

In 1999, while living in Boston, Siddiqui (as President), her husband (as Treasurer), and her sister (as resident agent) founded the nonprofit Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching. She attended a mosque outside the city, where she stored copies of the Quran and other Islamic literature that she distributed. She also helped establish the Dawa Resource Center, a program that distributed Qurans and offered Islam-based advice to prison inmates.

She received a Ph.D. degree in 2001 for her dissertation, titled "Separating the Components of Imitation." She also co-authored a journal article.

Blood diamonds, divorce, and al-Qaeda plot

Siddiqui was one of six alleged al-Qaeda members who bought blood diamonds in West Africa immediately prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks, according to a dossier prepared by U.N. investigators for the 9/11 Commission. Alan White, former chief investigator of a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Liberia, said she was in Monrovia, Liberia, on June 16, 2001, and for a week thereafter, using the alias of 'Fahrem', as on behalf of al-Qaeda's leadership she oversaw the purchase of blood diamonds worth $19 million, which were used to fund al-Qaeda operations. Al-Qaeda's goal was to have easily transportable, convertible, and untraceable assets at their disposal in anticipation of U.S.-led moves freezing al-Qaeda bank accounts and other assets worldwide after 9/11.

In the summer of 2001, the couple moved to Malden, Massachusetts. According to Khan, after the September 11 attacks Siddiqui insisted on leaving the U.S., saying that it was unsafe for them and their children to remain. He also said that she wanted him to move to Afghanistan, and work as a medic for the mujahideen.

In May 2002, the FBI questioned Siddiqui and her husband regarding their purchase over the internet of $10,000 worth of night vision goggles, body armor, and military manuals including The Anarchist's Arsenal, Fugitive, Advanced Fugitive, and How to Make C-4. Khan claimed that these were for hunting and camping expeditions. On June 26, 2002, the couple and their children returned to Pakistan.

In August 2002 the couple's marriage reached a breaking point. Khan says Siddiqui was abusive and manipulative throughout their seven years of marriage. He also said that she had a violent personality and extremist views, leading him to suspect her of involvement in jihadi activities. Khan went to Siddiqui's parents' home, and said he intended to divorce her. He and her father argued, and Siddiqui's father suffered a fatal heart attack on August 15, 2002. A few weeks later, in September 2002, Siddiqui gave birth to the last of their three children, Suleman. The couple's divorce was finalized on October 21, 2002.

On December 25, 2002, Siddiqui made a trip to the U.S., saying that she was looking for a job. She left the U.S. on January 2, 2003. Siddiqui's ex-husband was suspicious of her intentions, as she traveled to the U.S. at a time when U.S. universities are closed. The FBI suspects that the real purpose of her trip was to open a P.O. box for an alleged al-Qaeda operative, Majid Khan, to make it appear that he was still in the U.S. He is suspected of having planned attacks on gas stations and underground fuel-storage tanks in the Baltimore, Maryland—Washington, DC area on the orders of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, relayed through Ammar al-Baluchi. Siddiqui listed Majid Khan as a co-owner of the P.O. box, and falsely identified him as her husband. The P.O. box key was later found in the possession of Uzair Paracha, also implicated in the scheme. He was convicted of providing material support to al-Qaeda, and sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in 2006.

Disappearance

Disappearance and FBI warning

In early 2003, Siddiqui was working at Aga Khan University in Karachi. She emailed a former professor at Brandeis and expressed interest in working in the U.S., citing lack of options in Karachi for women of her academic background.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Siddiqui's second husband's uncle, who reportedly revealed her name during his interrogation.

On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, alleged al-Qaeda chief planner of the September 11 attacks, was arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He reportedly revealed during his interrogation that Siddiqui was a key al-Qaeda operative, triggering a series of related arrests shortly thereafter.

On March 25, 2003, the FBI issued a global "wanted for questioning" alert for Siddiqui and her ex-husband, Amjad Khan. Siddiqui was accused of being a "courier of blood diamonds and a financial fixer for al-Qaida". Khan was questioned by the FBI, and released.

A few days later, afraid the FBI would find her in Karachi, she left her parents' house along with her three children. She took a taxi to the airport, ostensibly to catch a morning flight to Islamabad to visit her uncle, but disappeared.

Siddiqui's whereabouts and activities from March 2003 to July 2008 are a matter of dispute.

In late March 2003, what the Boston Globe described as "sketchy" Pakistani news reports said Pakistani authorities had detained Siddiqui, and had questioned her with FBI agents. But Pakistani authorities denied the reports. On April 22, 2003, two U.S. federal law enforcement officials initially (and anonymously) said Siddiqui had been taken into custody by Pakistani authorities. Pakistani officials never confirmed the arrest, however, and later that day the U.S. officials amended their earlier statements, saying new information made it "doubtful" she was in custody.

In 2003–04, the FBI and the Pakistani government said they did not know where Siddiqui was. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft referred to her as being the most wanted woman in the world, an al-Qaeda "facilitator" who posed a "clear and present danger to the U.S." On May 26, 2004, the U.S. listed her among the seven "most wanted" al-Qaeda fugitives.

Family asserts detained by Pakistan and U.S.

"Lady Al-Qaeda"

—Headline reference to Siddiqui in New York Daily News

"Prisoner 650"

—Headline reference to Siddiqui in Tehran Times

Siddiqui's family said that she does not have any connections to al-Qaeda, and that after she disappeared in Pakistan in March 2003 with her three children, the U.S. detained her secretly in Afghanistan. They point to comments by former Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, detainees who say they believe a woman held at the prison while they were there was Siddiqui. Her sister said that Siddiqui had been raped, and tortured for five years.

According to Yvonne Ridley, best known for her capture by the Taliban and subsequent conversion to Islam after her release, Siddiqui spent those years in solitary confinement at Bagram as Prisoner 650. And Amnesty International listed her as possibly being a "ghost prisoner" held by the U.S.

Siddiqui herself gave conflicting explanations. She alternately claimed that she had been kidnapped by U.S. intelligence and Pakistani intelligence, while also claiming that she was working for Pakistani intelligence during this time. Siddiqui reportedly said that she worked at the Karachi Institute of Technology in 2005, was in Afghanistan in the winter of 2007, stayed for a time during her disappearance in Quetta, Pakistan, and was sheltered by various people.

Ex-husband, uncle, son, and U.S. assert Siddiqui in Pakistan

According to her ex-husband, after the global alert for her was issued Siddiqui went into hiding, and worked for al-Qaeda. During her disappearance Khan said he saw her at Islamabad airport in April 2003, as she disembarked from a flight with their son, and said he helped Inter-Services Intelligence identify her. He said he again saw her two years later, in a Karachi traffic jam. In February 2009, he told a Pakistani newspaper that most of the claims in Pakistani press reports related to her and their children were being propagated to garner public support and sympathy for her, but that they were one-sided and in most instances untrue.

Siddiqui's maternal uncle, Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi, said that on January 22, 2008, she visited him in Islamabad. She said she had been held by Pakistani agencies, and asked for his help in order to cross into Afghanistan, where she thought she would be safe in the hands of the Taliban. He had worked in Afghanistan, and made contact with the Taliban in 1999, but told her he was no longer in touch with them. He notified his sister, Siddiqui's mother, who came the next day to see her daughter. He said that Siddiqui stayed with them for two days. Her uncle has signed an affidavit swearing to these facts.

Her son, who was arrested with her, told Afghan investigators they had entered Afghanistan by road from Quetta, Pakistan, which they had left on August 15, 2008. The boy said he and Siddiqui had worked in an office in Pakistan, collecting money for poor people, and were later dispatched with maps and documents to Afghanistan, according to an Afghan intelligence official in the Ministry of the Interior.

An Afghan intelligence official said he believes that Siddiqui was working with Jaish-e-Mohammed (the "Army of Muhammad), a Pakistani Islamic mujahedeen military group that fights in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

The U.S. government said it did not hold Siddiqui during that time period, and had no knowledge of her whereabouts from March 2003 until July 2008. Dean Boyd, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman, called the allegations "absolutely baseless and false", a Central Intelligence Agency spokesman also denied that she had been detained by the U.S., and Gregory Sullivan, a State Department spokesman, said: "For several years, we have had no information regarding her whereabouts whatsoever. It is our belief that she ... has all this time been concealed from the public view by her own choosing." Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin said in 2008 that U.S. agencies had searched for evidence to support allegations that Siddiqui was detained in 2003, and held for years, but found

"zero evidence that Ms. Siddiqui was abducted, kidnapped, tortured, anything we hear repeatedly. I have found not a shred of evidence those allegations are true. A more plausible inference is that she went into hiding because people around her started to get arrested, and at least two of those people ended up at Guantanamo Bay."

According to some U.S. officials, after the global alert for her was issued Siddiqui went into hiding, and was at large working on behalf of al-Qaeda.

File:Ali-Abdul-Aziz-Ali.jpg
Second husband Ammar al-Baluchi.

Re-marriage

When she was arrested in 2008, she told FBI agents that she had re-married, her second husband being accused al-Qaeda member Ammar al-Baluchi. He is also known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and is a nephew of al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a cousin of Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Al-Baluchi, with whom she had worked in opening a P.O. box for Majid Kahn, and whom she says she married in March or April of 2003, was arrested on April 29, 2003, and taken to the Guantanamo Bay military prison, where he is in U.S. custody. He faces the death penalty in an upcoming trial in the U.S. for aiding the 9/11 hijackers.

Siddiqui's marriage to al-Baluchi was denied by her family. But it was confirmed by Pakistani intelligence, the FBI, Siddiqui herself (according to court records), a defense psychologist, and security sources and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family (according to BBC).

Children

Siddiqui's eldest son, Ahmad, resurfaced with her in 2008. He now lives with his aunt in Karachi, who has prohibited him from talking to the press.

Siddiqui has not explained clearly what happened to her two younger children, who are missing. She told one FBI agent that sometimes one has to take up a cause that is more important than one's children. She has alternated between saying that the two youngest children are dead, and that they are with her sister Fowzia. Her ex-husband believes that the children are in Karachi, and in contact with Siddiqui's family. He also says that the missing children were seen in Siddiqui's house in Karachi and in Islamabad on several occasions since their alleged disappearance in 2003.

Siddiqui's ex-husband has unsuccessfully sought custody of their eldest son, and said that he suspected the two younger children (who he says were seen at their aunt's house) are with Siddiqui's family, and not in U.S. detention.

Arrest

Siddiqui was encountered on the evening of July 17, 2008, by officers of the Ghazni Province Afghan National Police outside the Ghazni governor's compound. With two small bags at her side, crouching on the ground, she aroused the suspicion of a man who feared she might be concealing a bomb under the burqua that she was wearing. He called the police. She was accompanied by a teenage boy about 12, who she claimed was an orphan she had adopted. She said her name was Saliha, that she was from Multan in Pakistan, and that the boy's name was Ali Hassan. Discovering that she did not speak either of Afghanistan's main dialects, Pashtu or Dari, the officers regarded her as suspicious.

The Plum Island Animal Disease Center, one of the locations listed in Siddiqui's notes with regard to a "mass casualty" attack

The police searched her and her handbag. They found that she had a number of documents written in Urdu and English describing the creation of explosives, chemical weapons, Ebola, dirty bombs, and radiological agents (which discussed mortality rates of certain of the weapons), and handwritten notes referring to a "mass casualty attack" that listed various U.S. locations and landmarks (including the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the New York City subway system). She also had documents detailing U.S. "military assets", excerpts from The Anarchist's Arsenal, a one-gigabyte digital media storage device (thumb drive) that contained over 500 electronic documents (including correspondence referring to attacks by "cells", describing the U.S. as an enemy, and discussing recruitment of jihadists and training), maps of Ghazni and the provincial governor's compounds and the mosques he prayed in, and photos of Pakistani military people, Other notes described various ways to attack enemies, including by destroying reconnaissance drones, using underwater bombs, and using gliders.

She also had "numerous chemical substances in gel and liquid form that were sealed in bottles and glass jars", according to the later complaint against her, and about two pounds of sodium cyanide, a highly toxic poison.

The officers arrested her, as she cursed them, and took her to a police station. DNA testing performed a short time later revealed that the boy was in fact her eldest son, Ahmed, which Siddiqui subsequently admitted.

Attack

The following day, on July 18, two FBI agents, a U.S. Army warrant officer, a U.S. Army captain, and their U.S. military interpreters arrived in Ghazni to interview Siddiqui at the Afghan National Police facility where she was being held. They congregated in a meeting room that was partitioned by a curtain, but did not realize that Siddiqui was standing unsecured behind the curtain. The warrant officer sat down adjacent to the curtain, and put his loaded M-4 assault rifle on the floor by his feet, next to the curtain.

"It was pure chaos."

—Captain Robert Snyder

Siddiqui drew back the curtain, picked up the rifle, and pointed it at the captain. “I could see the barrel of the rifle, the inner portion of the barrel of the weapon; that indicated to me that it was pointed straight at my head,” he said. She threatened them loudly in English, and yelled "Get the fuck out of here" and "May the blood of be on your ". The captain dove for cover to his left, as she yelled "Allah Akbar" and fired at least two shots at them, missing them.

An Afghan interpreter who was seated closest to her lunged, grabbed and pushed the rifle, and tried to wrest it from her. At that point the warrant officer returned fire with a 9-millimeter pistol, hitting her in the torso, and one of the interpreters managed to wrestle the rifle away from her. During the ensuing struggle she initially struck and kicked the officers, while shouting in English that she wanted to kill Americans, and then lost consciousness.

She was taken to Bagram Air Base by helicopter in critical condition. When she arrived at the hospital she was 3 on Glasgow Coma Scale, but she underwent emergency surgery without complication while hospitalized at the Craig Theater Joint Hospital, and recovered over the next two weeks.

Afghan police offered a competing version of the events, telling Reuters that U.S. troops had demanded she be handed over, disarmed the Afghans when they refused, and then shot Siddiqui mistakenly thinking she was a suicide bomber.

Trial

Charges

Siddiqui was charged on July 31, 2008, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, with assault with a deadly weapon, and with attempting to kill U.S. personnel. She was flown to New York on August 6, and indicted on September 3, 2008, on two counts of attempted murder of U.S. nationals, officers, and employees, assault with a deadly weapon, carrying and using a firearm, and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees.

Explaining why the U.S. may have chosen to charge her as they did, rather than for her alleged terrorism, Bruce Hoffman, professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said the decision turned what might have been a potentially complex terrorism matter into a more straightforward case:

"There’s no intelligence data that needs to be introduced, no sources and methods that need to be risked. It’s a good old-fashioned crime; it’s the equivalent of a 1920s gangster with a tommy gun."

Pakistani and other supporters

In August 2009, Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani met with Siddiqui's sister at his residence, and assured her that Pakistan would seek Siddiqui's release from the U.S. The Pakistani government paid $2 million for the services of three lawyers to defend Siddiqui during her trial. Many Siddiqui supporters were present during the proceedings, and outside the court dozens of people rallied to demand her release.

Medical treatment and psychological assessments

On or about August 1, 2008, Siddiqui told a U.S. special agent at the Craig Hospital that "spewing bullets at soldiers is bad", but to her surprise "you" have still taken care of me and treated me well. On August 11, U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry B. Pitman ordered that she be "examined by a medical doctor within 24 hours". Her counsel had maintained she had not seen doctor since arriving in the U.S. a week prior. Prosecutors said Siddiqui had been provided with adequate medical care since her detention in Afghanistan, though at the hearing they were unable to confirm whether she had been seen in New York by a doctor or by a paramedic. She was examined by a doctor the following day, who found no visible signs of infection.

Siddiqui was provided care for her wound while incarcerated in the U.S. In September 2008, a prosecutor reported to the court that Siddiqui had refused to be examined by a female doctor, despite the doctor's extensive efforts. On September 9, 2008, she underwent a forced medical exam. In November 2008, forensic psychologist Dr. Leslie Powers reported that Siddiqui had been "reluctant to allow medical staff to treat her", expressing significant distrust of them. Her last medical exam had indicated her external wounds no longer required medical dressing, and were healing well. She also consistently and steadfastly refused to take any medication to address the psychological symptoms she complained of. In a March 2009 report, Dr. Saathoff noted that Siddiqui frequently verbally and physically refused to allow the medical staff to check her vital signs and weight, attempted to refuse medical care once it was apparent that her wound had largely healed, and refused to take antibiotics. At the same time, Siddiqui claimed to her brother that she when she needed medical treatment she did not get it, which Saathoff said he found no support for in his review of documents and interviews with medical and security personnel, and his interviews with Siddiqui.

Siddiqui's trial was subject to delays, the longest being six months in order to perform psychiatric evaluations. She underwent three sets of psychological assessments before trial. Her first psychiatric evaluation diagnosed her with depressive psychosis, and her second evaluation, ordered by the court, revealed chronic depression.

In a third set of psychological assessments, more detailed than the previous two, three of four psychiatrists concluded that she was intentionally faking her symptoms of mental illness ("malingering") to evade criminal prosecution, and to improve her chances she of being returned to Pakistan. In April 2009, Manhattan federal judge Richard Berman held that she was competent to stand trial.

Jury selection controversy; threatened boycott

Siddiqui said she did not want Jews on the jury. She demanded that all prospective jurors be DNA-tested, and excluded from the jury at her trial:

if they have a Zionist or Israeli background ... they are all mad at me ... I have a feeling everyone here is them—subject to genetic testing. They should be excluded, if you want to be fair.

Siddiqui's legal team said, in regard to her comments, that her incarceration had damaged her mind.

Prior to her trial, Siddiqui said she was innocent of all charges. She maintained she could prove she was innocent, but refused to do so in court. On January 11, 2010, Siddiqui told the Judge that she would not cooperate with her attorneys, and wanted to fire them. She also said she did not trust the Judge, and that she was "boycotting the trial ... there are too many injustices. I’m out of this". Following her outburst she was removed from the court, though the Judge said she would be allowed back, as she was entitled to be present at her trial.

Trial proceedings

Siddiqui's trial began with opening arguments on January 19, 2010, in New York City. Prior to the jury entering the courtroom, Siddiqui told onlookers that she would not work with her lawyers, and that: "This isn't a fair court ... Why do I have to be here? ... There are many different versions of how this happened". She also said: "I have information about attacks, more than 9/11! ... I want to help the President to end this group, to finish them ... They are a domestic, U.S. group; they are not Muslim."

Three government witnesses testified first, out of a total of nine called by the prosecution: Army Captain Robert Snyder, John Threadcraft, a former army officer, and John Jefferson, an FBI agent. As Snyder testified that Siddiqui had been arrested with a handwritten note outlining plans to attack various U.S. sites, she disrupted the proceedings, saying: "If you were in a secret prison ... where children were tortured ... This is no list of targets against New York. I was never planning to bomb it. You're lying." As result of her outbursts, Siddiqui was repeatedly removed from the court, but told by the judge that she could watch the proceedings on closed-circuit television in an adjacent holding cell, a proposal that she rejected. A request by the defense lawyers to declare a mistrial was turned down by the judge.

The defense counsel said that the jury would not see any forensic evidence that the rifle was fired in the interrogation room. It said it expected to show that there were very different versions of the story, and that her handbag contents were not credible as evidence because they were sloppily handled. FBI agent John Jefferson and Ahmed Gul, an army interpreter, recounted their struggle with her. Judge Berman warned Siddiqui that future outbursts would not be tolerated, to which she responded: "I’m just going to be quiet, but it doesn’t mean I agree."

An FBI agent said that they did not find her fingerprints on the rifle. Author Glenn Sulmasy observed in the National Review that: "Of course, in a combat theater, such 'fingerprinting' does not ordinarily occur. Gul's testimony appeared, according to the defense, to differ from that given by Snyder with regard to whether Siddiqui was standing or on her knees as she fired the rifle. When Siddiqui testified, though she admitted trying to escape, she denied that she had grabbed the rifle and said she had been tortured in secret prisons before her arrest by a “group of people pretending to be Americans, doing bad things in America’s name.”

Conviction

The trial lasted 14 days, and the jury deliberated for 3 days before reaching a verdict.

On February 3, 2010, she was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder, armed assault, using and carrying a firearm, and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and employees. She faces a minimum sentence of 30 years and a maximum of life in prison on the firearm charge, and could also get up to 20 years for each attempted murder and armed assault charge, and up to 8 years on each of the remaining assault counts. Sentence will be passed on May 6, 2010.

Reaction in Pakistan

In Pakistan, her 2010 conviction was followed by expressions of support by many Pakistani people, who appeared increasingly anti-American, as well as by politicians and news media, who characterized her as a symbol of victimization by the U.S.

A petition was filed seeking action against the Pakistani government for not approaching the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have Siddiqui released from the U.S. Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffree said the CIA had arrested Siddiqui in Karachi in 2003, and one of her sons was killed during her arrest. On January 21, 2010, he submitted documents allegedly proving the arrest to the Lahore High Court.

After her conviction, thousands of political and social activists and students in Pakistan protested. Some shouted anti-American slogans, and burned the American flag. Her sister has spoken frequently on her behalf at rallies. Echoing her family's comments, and anti-U.S. sentiment, many believe she was picked up in Karachi in 2003, detained at the U.S. Bagram Airbase, and tortured, and that the charges against her were fabricated. U.S. officials flatly deny the assertions.

The Pakistani Embassy in Washington, DC, issued a statement saying diplomats were "dismayed" over the verdict, and "The Government of Pakistan made intense diplomatic and legal efforts on her behalf and will consult the family of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and the team of defense lawyers to determine the future course of action." Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has described Siddiqui as a “daughter of the nation,” and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif has promised to push for her release. On February 18, President Asif Ali Zardari requested of Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, that the U.S. consider repatriating Siddiqui to Pakistan under the Pakistan-U.S. Prisoner Exchange Agreement. On February 22, the Pakistani Senate passed a resolution expressing its grave concern over Siddiqui's sentence, and demanding that the government take effective steps including diplomatic measures to secure her immediate release.

Shireen Mazari, editor of the Pakistani right-wing Nation newspaper, wrote that the verdict "did not really surprise anyone familiar with the vindictive mindset of the U.S. public post-9/11". Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio noted on March 1 that while when Siddiqui's case has been covered in the U.S., it has mostly been described as a straightforward case of terrorism, in contrast when "the Pakistani media described this very same woman, this very same case, the assumptions are all very different". The News International, Pakistan's largest circulation English newspaper, carried a March 3 letter from Talat Farooq, the executive editor of the magazine Criterion in Islamabad, in which she wrote:

The media has highlighted her ordeal without debating the downside of her story in objective detail. A whole generation of Pakistanis, grown up in an environment that discourages critical analysis and dispassionate objectivity ... has ... allowed their emotions to be exploited. The Aafia case is complex... The grey lady is grey precisely because of her murky past and the question mark hanging over her alleged links to militants.... Her family's silence during the years of her disappearance, and her ex-husband's side of the story, certainly provide fodder to the opposing point of view.... The right-wing parties ... have once again played the card of anti-Americanism to attain their own political ends.... Our hatred of America, based on some very real grievances, also serves as a readily available smokescreen to avoid any rational thinking.... The response of the religious political lobby to Aafia's plight is symbolic of our social mindset.

A New York Times article reviewing the Pakistani reaction noted: "All of this has taken place with little national soul-searching about the contradictory and frequently damning circumstances surrounding Ms. Siddiqui, who is suspected of having had links to Al Qaeda and the banned jihadi group Jaish-e-Muhammad. Instead, the Pakistani news media have broadly portrayed her trial as a “farce”, and an example of the injustices meted out to Muslims by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001."

Jessica Eve Stern, a terrorism specialist and lecturer at Harvard Law School, observed: "Whatever the truth is, this case is of great political importance because of how people view her."

Taliban threat

According to the Pakistani newspaper The News International, the Taliban has threatened to execute captured U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, whom they have held since June 2009, in retaliation for Siddiqui's conviction. They claim members of Siddiqui's family requested their help. A Taliban spokesman said:

We tried our best to make the family understand that our role may create more troubles for the hapless woman, who was already in trouble. On their persistent requests, we have now decided to include Dr Aafia Siddiqui's name in the list of our prisoners in US custody that we delivered to Americans in Afghanistan for swap of their soldier in our custody.

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