Source Cont'd-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aafia_Siddiqui
Arrest in Afghanistan[edit]
On the evening of 17 July 2008, a woman was approached by Ghazni Province police officers in the city of Ghazni outside the Ghazni governor's compound. She was holding two small bags at her side while crouching on the ground. This aroused the officer's suspicion, raising concerns that she might be concealing a bomb under her burqa.[3] Previously, a shopkeeper had noticed a woman in a burqa drawing a map, which is suspicious in Afghanistan where women are generally illiterate.[21][25] There had also been a report that a Pakistani woman in a burqa with a boy were traveling in Afghanistan urging women to volunteer for suicide bombing.[131] She was accompanied by a young boy that she said was her adopted son.[64] She said her name was Saliha, that she was from Multan in Pakistan, and that the boy's name was Ali Hassan.[3] Discovering that she did not speak either of Afghanistan's main languages, Pashtu or Dari, the officers regarded her as suspicious.[21] She told the police she was looking for her husband, needed no help, and started to walk away.[131]She was arrested and taken to the police station for questioning. She initially claimed the boy was her stepson, Ali Hassan. (The woman was not identified as Siddiqui until after hospitalized and fingerprinted. She subsequently admitted he was her biological son when DNA testing proved the boy to be Ahmed.[3][64]
In a bag she was carrying, the police found a number of documents in English and Urdu describing how to make 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 US 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), according to her indictment.[3][21][132] The Globe also mentioned one document about a "theoretical" biological weapon that did not harm children.[25] She also reportedly had documents about American military bases, excerpts from a bombmaking manual, a one-gigabyte digital media storage device that contained over 500 electronic documents (including correspondence referring to attacks by "cells", describing the US as an enemy, and discussing recruitment of jihadists and training), maps of Ghazni and the provincial governor's compounds and nearby mosques, and photos of members of the Pakistani military.[3][20][21][30][133][134] Other notes described various ways to attack enemies, including by destroying reconnaissance drones, using underwater bombs, and using gliders.[20][21]
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,[3][21][30][133][135] and about two pounds of sodium cyanide, a highly toxic poison.[20][26] US prosecutors later said that sodium cyanide is lethal even when ingested in small doses (even less than five milligrams), and various of the other chemicals she had could be used in explosives.[136] Abdul Ghani, Ghazni's deputy police chief, said she later confessed she had planned a suicide attack against the governor of Ghazni Province.[134]
- Explanation
Attempting to explain the timing of her January 2008 visit to her uncle and asking for help in contacting the Taliban in Afghanistan,[118] and her reappearance in Ghazni in July later that year, journalist Deborah Scroggins noted that a breakdown in the "long-standing alliance between the Deobandi jihadis and the military" occurred in preceding months, which—if Siddiqui was in hiding rather than imprisoned—could have led to Siddiqui's "falling out with her secret government protectors".[137] In 2007 a roving "burka brigade" of women based at Lal Mosque attempted to enforce sharia law in Islamabad. Attempts to stop them climaxed in July when at least 100 militants were killed by the military in the storming of the Lal Mosque. In the next five months, dozens of suicide attacks killing almost 2000 people (including many soldiers) were executed in retaliation. Scroggins believed this bloodshed may have alienated any military protection Siddiqui had, and the role played by women of the "burka brigade" could have been seen by conservative Islamists as evidence of women causing fitna (strife).[137][138]
On the other hand, supporters noted that Siddiqui's reappearance "loitering in Ghazni ... less than two weeks" after a press conference by Yvonne Ridley where Ridley alleged Siddiqui had been "held in isolation by the Americans for more than four years", and which "attracted enormous coverage"[139] especially in the Muslim world, seemed highly suspicious.[13]
Shooting(s) in Ghazni[edit]
There are conflicting accounts of the events following her arrest in Ghazni. American authorities said that two FBI agents, a US Army warrant officer, a US Army captain, and their US military interpreters arrived in Ghazni the following day on 18 July to interview Siddiqui at the Afghan National Police facility where she was being held.[21][133][140] They reported they congregated in a meeting room that was partitioned by a curtain, but did not realise that Siddiqui was standing unsecured behind the curtain.[21][140] The warrant officer sat down and put his loaded M4 carbine on the floor by his feet near the curtain.[21][140] Siddiqui drew back the curtain, picked up the rifle, and pointed it at the captain.[133][140] "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.[133][140] Then, she was said to have threatened them loudly in English, and yelled "Get the fuck out of here" and "May the blood of [unintelligible] be on your [head or hands]".[21][140] The captain dove for cover to his left as she yelled "Allah Akbar" and fired at least two shots at them, missing them.[20][133][140] An Afghan interpreter who was seated closest to her tried to disarm her.[21][133][140][141] At that point the warrant officer returned fire with a 9-millimeter pistol, hitting her in the torso, and one of the interpreters disarmed her.[20][21][98][140] A Justice Department statement said that Siddiqui struck and kicked the officers during the ensuing struggle; "she shout[ed] in English that she wanted to kill Americans" and then lost consciousness.[21][140]
Siddiqui related a different version of events, according to Pakistani senators who later visited her in jail. She denied touching a gun, shouting, or threatening anyone. She said she stood up to see who was on the other side of the curtain, and that after one of the startled soldiers shouted "She is loose", she was shot. On regaining consciousness, she said someone said "We could lose our jobs."[29]
Some of the Afghan police offered a third version of the events, telling Reuters that US troops had demanded that she be handed over, disarmed the Afghans when they refused, and then shot Siddiqui mistakenly thinking she was a suicide bomber.[142]
Hospital treatment and evaluation[edit]
Siddiqui was taken to U.S. military base Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan by helicopter in critical condition.[30] When she arrived at the hospital she was rated at 3 on the Glasgow Coma Scale, but she underwent surgery without complication. She was hospitalised at the Craig Theater Joint Hospital, and recovered over the next two weeks.[29][64] According to FBI reports prepared after the operation, Siddiqui repeatedly denied shooting anyone.[143] FBI reports maintained that Siddiqui told a US special agent at the Craig Hospital on or about 1 August that "spewing bullets at soldiers is bad," and expressed surprise that she was being treated well.[143]
While at the hospital she was interrogated by an FBI agent every day for ten days for an "average of eight hours" a day.[144] Her testimony was at odds with what Siddiqui later told lawyers and the court about what happened during her disappearance. Supporters complained that she was not Mirandized, nor did she have access to a Pakistani consular official, and that she was in a "narcotic state" at the time.[145] She later told visiting Pakistani her statements might not look good to the Pakistani public but she had made them because her children had been threatened.[146]
Criminal complaint and trial[edit]
In pretrial activity, defense attorney Elaine Sharp said that the documents and item found on Siddiqui were planted.[147] A government terrorism expert disagreed, stating there were "hundred of pages in her own handwriting".[148] In Pakistan, Siddiqui's sister Fowzi accused the US of raping and torturing her sister and denying her medical treatment. The Pakistan National Assembly passed a unanimous resolution calling for Siddiqui's repatriation.[149]
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.[150] On 11 January 2010, Siddiqui told the judge that she would not co-operate with her attorneys and wanted to fire them. She said she did not trust the judge and added, "I'm boycotting the trial, just to let all of you know. There's too many injustices." She then put her head down on the defence table as the prosecution proceeded.[151]
Charges[edit]
On 31 July 2008 while Siddiqui was still being treated in Afghanistan, she was charged in a sealed criminal complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York with assault with a deadly weapon and with attempting to kill a United States Army Captain “while engaged in... official duties.”[21][30] In total, she was charged on two counts of attempted murder of US nationals, officers, and employees, assault with a deadly weapon, carrying and using a firearm, and three counts of assault on US officers and employees.[21][152][153]
Explaining why the US 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, "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."[154]
Defense lawyer Sharp expressed scepticism regarding both the terrorism and assault charges: "I think it's interesting that they make all these allegations about the dirty bombs and other items she supposedly had, but they haven't charged her with anything relating to terrorism... I would urge people to consider her as innocent unless the government proves otherwise."[155]
Extradition and arraignment[edit]
On 4 August 2008, Siddiqui was placed on an FBI jet and flown to New York City[30] after the Afghan government granted extradition to the United States for trial.[156] She refused to appear for her arraignment or attend a hearing in September or meet with visitors.[157] Siddiqui made her first appearance before a judge in a Manhattan courtroom in court August 6, 2008 following which she was remanded into custody.[153]
Medical treatment and psychological assessments[edit]
On 11 August, after her counsel maintained that Siddiqui had not seen a doctor since arriving in the US the previous week, US Magistrate Judge Henry B. Pitman ordered that she be examined by a medical doctor within 24 hours.[158] Prosecutors maintained that Siddiqui had received adequate medical care for her gunshot wound but could not confirm whether she had been seen by a doctor or paramedic.[159] The judge postponed her bail hearing until 3 September.[160] An examination by a doctor the following day found no visible signs of infection; she also received a CAT scan.[161]
Siddiqui was provided care for her wound while incarcerated in the US.[64] 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.[143] On 9 September 2008, she underwent a forced medical exam.[64] In November 2008, forensic psychologist Leslie Powers reported that Siddiqui had been "reluctant to allow medical staff to treat her". Her last medical exam had indicated her external wounds no longer required medical dressing and were healing well.[162] A psychiatrist employed by the prosecutor to examine Siddiqui's competence to stand trial, Gregory B. Saathoff, noted in a March 2009 report 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.[64] At the same time, Siddiqui claimed to her brother that 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, nor in his interviews with Siddiqui.[64]
Siddiqui's trial was subject to delays, the longest being six months to perform psychiatric evaluations.[30] She had been given routine mental health check-ups ten times in August and six times in September. 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.[163] Leslie Powers initially determined Siddiqui mentally unfit to stand trial. After reviewing portions of FBI reports, however, she told the pre-trial judge she believed Siddiqui was faking mental illness.[25]
In a third set of psychological assessments, more detailed than the previous two, three of four psychiatrists concluded that she was "malingering" (faking her symptoms of mental illness) and that she behaved normally when she thought the assessors were not looking. One suggested that this was to prevent criminal prosecution and to improve her chances of being returned to Pakistan.[30][143] In April 2009, Manhattan federal judge Richard Berman held that she "may have some mental health issues" but was competent to stand trial.[30][143][162]
While Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and other ghost prisoners had given the Red Cross "elaborate descriptions of waterboardings and other tortures" they had suffered, government psychiatrist Dr. Sally Johnson testified in a pre-trial hearing that Siddiqui had never given anyone, whether her brother, her lawyers, Pakistani senators or embassy personnel, other visitors, prison staff or psychiatrists, "a clear account of any torture or imprisonment".[164]
Objection to Jews[edit]
A three-person defence team was hired by the Pakistani embassy to supplement her two existing public defenders, but Siddiqui refused to co-operate with them.[29] She tried to dismiss her lawyers on the grounds that they were Jewish.[30] She said the case against her was a Jewish conspiracy, demanded that no Jews be allowed on the jury,[165] and that all prospective jurors be DNA-tested and excluded from the jury at her trial "if they have a Zionist or Israeli background." She stated "... 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."[151] In regard to her comments, Siddiqui's legal team stated that her incarceration had damaged her mind.[20][166]
She later claimed she was not against all "Israeli Americans".[167]
Trial proceedings[edit]
After 18 months of detention, Siddiqui's trial began in New York City on 19 January 2010.[168][169][170][171] Prior to the jury entering the courtroom, Siddiqui told onlookers that she would not work with her lawyers because the trial was a sham.[172] 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."[26][173]
Nine government witnesses were called by the prosecution. Army Captain Robert Snyder, John Threadcraft, a former army officer, and FBI agent John Jefferson testified first.[32] As Snyder testified that Siddiqui had been arrested with a handwritten note outlining plans to attack various US sites, she interjected: "Since I'll never get a chance to speak... If you were in a secret prison... or your children were tortured... Give me a little credit, this is not a list of targets against New York. I was never planning to bomb it. You're lying."[174][175][176][177] The court also heard from FBI agent John Jefferson and Ahmed Gul, an army interpreter, who recounted their struggle with her. The judge disallowed as evidence her possession of chemicals and terror manuals and her alleged ties to al-Qaeda because they could have created an inappropriate bias.[178]
Her defence argued that there was no forensic evidence that the rifle was fired in the interrogation room.[173] They noted the nine government witnesses offered conflicting accounts of how many people were in the room, where they were positioned and how many shots were fired.[32] It said that her handbag contents were not credible as evidence because they were sloppily handled.[179] According to Iranian PressTV, Carlo Rosati, an FBI firearms expert witness, doubted whether the M-4 rifle was ever fired at the crime scene; an FBI agent testified that Siddiqui's fingerprints were not found on the rifle.[180] The prosecution argued that it was not unusual to fail to get fingerprints off a gun. "This is a crime that was committed in a war zone, a chaotic and uncontrolled environment 6,000 miles away from here."[176] Gul's testimony appeared, according to the defence, 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, she admitted trying to escape, but said she had not taken the rifle or fired any shots. She said 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."[28]
Siddiqui insisted on testifying at the trial against the advice of her lawyers.[181] According to at least one source (Deborah Scroggins), Siddiqui "avoided the question of where she had been for the last five years" and her replies under cross examination may have damaged her credibility in jurists' eyes. In answer to prosecutor's questions she stated that the documents in her bag on terror plans and weapons had been given to her, and that she did not know that the boy who was with her in Ghazni was her son. When it was pointed out that the document in her bag were in her own handwriting, she stated "in a vague and halting manner" that she had been forced to copy them out of a magazine so that her children would not be tortured. When questioned about taking a firearms course she stated that "everyone used to take it". The pistol safety instructor then testified that he remembered teaching her how to fire "hundreds of rounds." In his closing arguments the prosecutor told the jury that Siddiqui had "raised her right hand" and "lied to your face".[182]
During the trial, Siddiqui was removed from the court several times for repeatedly interrupting the proceedings with shouting; on being ejected, she was told by the judge that she could watch the proceedings on closed-circuit television in an adjacent holding cell. A request by the defence lawyers to declare a mistrial was turned down by the judge.[183] Amnesty International monitored the trial for fairness.[38]
Conviction[edit]
The trial lasted 14 days with the jury deliberating for three days before reaching a verdict.[32][33] On 3 February 2010, Siddiqui was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder, armed assault, using and carrying a firearm, and three counts of assault on US officers and employees.[27][32][33] After jurors found Siddiqui guilty, she exclaimed: "This is a verdict coming from Israel, not America. That's where the anger belongs."[184]
She faced a minimum sentence of 30 years and a maximum of life in prison on the firearm charge, and could also have received a sentence of up to 20 years for each attempted murder and armed assault charge, and up to 8 years on each of the remaining assault counts.[33] Her lawyers requested a 12-year sentence, instead of the life sentence recommended by the probation office. They argued that mental illness drove her actions when she attempted to escape from the Afghan National Police station "by any means available ... what she viewed as a horrific fate".[34] Her lawyers also claimed her mental illness was on display during her trial outbursts and boycotts, and that she was "first and foremost" the victim of her own irrational behaviour. The sentencing hearing set to take place on 6 May 2010[27] was rescheduled for mid-August 2010[7] and then September 2010.[34]
Sentencing[edit]
Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years in prison by Judge Berman on 23 September 2010. During the sentencing hearing, which lasted one hour, Siddiqui spoke on her own behalf.[185] Upon hearing the verdict, she turned to trial spectators and told them that "this verdict coming from Israel and not from America".[182]
A New York Times reporter wrote that at times during the hearing Judge Berman seemed to be speaking to an audience beyond the courtroom in an apparent attempt to address widespread speculation about Siddiqui and her case. He gave as an example a reference to the five-year period before her 2008 arrest of Siddiqui's disappearance and claims of torture, where the judge said: "I am aware of no evidence in the record to substantiate these allegations or to establish them as fact. There is no credible evidence in the record that the United States officials and/or agencies detained Dr. Siddiqui".[186]
At the time of sentencing Siddiqui did not show any interest in filing an appeal, instead saying "I appeal to God and he hears me." After she was sentenced, she urged forgiveness and asked the public not to take any action in retaliation.[187] She stated, "forgive everybody in my case, please... Don't get angry. If I'm not angry, why should anyone else be?"[188] In a notably gracious exchange between the bestower and recipient of an 80+ year sentence of incarceration, the judge wished her "the very best going forward", and both Siddiqui and the judge thanked each other.[189]
Imprisonment[edit]
Siddiqui (Federal Bureau of Prisons #90279-054) was originally held at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn.[190] She is now being held in Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, a federal prison for female inmates with special mental health needs, and also relatively close to the home of her brother Ali Siddiqui.[189] Her release date is August 30, 2083.[191]
Children[edit]
Siddiqui's son Ahmed was released from Afghanistan to his aunt in Pakistan following enormous outcry from the Pakistani public and politicians.[192] While Pakistani law would normally give his father custody, his father did not want to fight the passionate public opinion supporting his aunt Fawzia.[192] He now lives with his aunt in Karachi, who has prohibited him from talking to the press.[25][30] In April 2010, Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed a 12-year-old girl found outside a house in Karachi was identified by DNA as Siddiqui's daughter, Mariyam, and that she had been returned to her family.[112] Their father and his parents have not been allowed to see either child.
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