Updates Regarding Aafia Siddiqui's Treatment

[DontKhanMe]

Damn these Afghans and their ex-Soviet bas*tards. Its time Pakistan took up Jihad against these sickening war criminals and kicked them out.

 

[Abdullah-Khan]

Damn these Afghans and their ex-Soviet bas*tards. Its time Pakistan took up Jihad against these sickening war criminals and kicked them out.

Unfortunately brother, Pakistan's resources are only going toward killing and kidnapping Muslim men and women, both foreign and local. We (including myself) talk about the Pakistan Government and Military AS IF we have control over it. The Government will issue orders to the troops to wage """jihad""" only when directed to by America. Hence it is more likely going to be a """jihad""" waged against us, The citizens of Pakistan. We (Pakistanis) have become first class with jihad in the way of shaytaan.

I find myself tempted to declare the entire establishment and it's participants kufaar. it's democratic foundation, from which the shariah of Allah is absent and becomes a mere OPTION, certainly provides clear basis for such a statement. Need we mention our choice of allegiance and our actually actions against muslims?

However, i will refrain because things are not that simple. Although there are many in our corrupt establishment willing to commit any atrocities against Muslims for a few rupees and who abhor the law of Allah ta 'ala. There are also those, intertwined amongst their evil ranks, that are sincere to Allah and to the Pakistan people. You may find that they do not have big beards nor are they 'alim, but the are sincere none the less. I present the name Hamid Gul as an example.

What we need to do is break ties with America, keep them at arms length, and then manage our national and international affairs based on the interest of Pakistan and Muslims. We truly need an ahl sunnah styled Iranian revolution and kick out the American lapdogs, who have infiltrated highest levels of our government, military, intelligence, media, and universities. Let them depart Pakistan and live their lives in a kaafir state, rather than allowing them to turn Pakistan into one. These "Pro America" clowns are so obvious, i am surprise that they haven't been called out yet.

I mean let us analyze this for a moment and ask the question: who in Pakistan or in the Muslim world has any reason to have a "pro America" attitude? do we really need to list America's offenses?

So why are we standing by while our puppet Pakistan government orders OUR own troops to wage war on us, the citizens of Pakistan. Why are we allowing this handful of western educated, secular, anti-shariah, munafiq thugs determine the destiny of the Muslim men and women of Pakistan whom bow their heads to Allah subhanahu wa ta 'ala.

The reason why is because of our own lack of concern. Full stop.

Narrated Thawban: The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: The people will soon summon one another to attack you as people when eating invite others to share their dish. Someone asked: Will that be because of our small numbers at that time? He replied: No, you will be numerous at that time: but you will be scum and rubbish like that carried down by a torrent, and Allah will take fear of you from the breasts of your enemy and last enervation into your hearts. Someone asked: What is wahn (enervation). Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him): He replied: Love of the world and dislike of death. (Abu Dawood Book:37 Hadith: 4284)

We just talk and complain and resist very little, whether violent or non violent to remove these jokers.

Allow me to humbly present a ""radical"" solution: Take the population number of 1/4 of any city in Pakistan and mobilize them... weaponless if you will. Then storm the mansions of these tugs. Arrest them and drag them by the scruff of the necks.... march them to the nearest airport and send them to the masters to who they serve, to America.

Simply! We clearly have more the 1/4 of a city worth of disgruntled Muslims, displease with these worshipers of America. But instead we have to beg them to take action for a women whom they gave up to America. So they in turn beg America to release Aafia.... lest they loose control of the populous thus failing in their duty to serve them.

What a joke! What a joke!

Pakistan Government is basically our liaison for the true rulers of Pakistan - America. They are in place only because the west knows Muslims are more racist than religious. They know that Muslims will never tolerate a white face to rule, even if it were with shari'ah and justice, but we will tolerate a fellow countryman to subdue us with kufr and tyranny.

Narrated Abdullah ibn Umar: I heard the Apostle of Allah, (peace be upon him) say: When you enter into the 'aynah transactiona (transactions intended to circumvent the prohibition on riba), and hold the tails of oxen, are pleased with agriculture, and give up conducting jihad . Allah will place disgrace and humiliation over you, and will not remove it until you return to your original religion. (Abu Dawoo Book #23, Hadith #3455)

Is this not what is happening to Pakistan right now? Did we not hand over a Muslim women to kufaar for a few rupees?

May Allah forgive me. May Allah guide the people of Pakistan





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[forcetrip]

Unfortunately most likely it will be my mother or sister or daughter next. Or maybe yours.[/color][/size]




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No they wont.. because they are not terrorists waging war on humanity

 

[DontKhanMe]

No they wont.. because they are not terrorists waging war on humanity

Don't wanna be a fanatic here; in addition to our confirmed impotence for defending our own citizens and providing them due legal process, I have to object to your statement here.

Is that you suggesting that she is a terrorist? - and that her situation is acceptable? Alas! this is why they have already won

Lets suppose she really was fighting American invasion of Afghanistan (on which I support her like any good Muslim must do). Being a lone woman, she really was fighting world's lone superpower, face to face, against their injustices, aggression, media propaganda, islamophobia, war crimes, land grabbings, systematic torture ... do you really believe if she was shot at point blank in one of US detention centers, it would have served US' purpose of remiving yet another threat in their so called WOT campaign? Indeed it definitely would have

But US/West/Zionists agenda was to win the psychological warfare. They didn't kill her; they made example out of her, right infront of our eyes; humiliation after humiliation. They want to sensationalize their population that look here, even Muslim women are some kind of terrorists. I even teach muslim parrots to repeat these properganda

Honestly, arabs are loosers, bunch of cowards, with no idea about military purchase or utilization ... we Pakistan, having all this bullsh1t of missiles, nuclear cards, proud PAF, proud democracy, proud huge vibrant population ... what we have done? Don't we deserve to be rated as loosers of wworst kind, worst than arabs even?

 

[Abdullah-Khan]

No they wont.. because they are not terrorists waging war on humanity

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OK, Pay very close attention to this article by a KAAFIR - You may think that i am using the word kaafir as a derogatory term, and you would be correct. But the intended slur is not directed toward the author. The simple fact of the matter is that he is indeed a non-muslim. Rather the insult is directed towards we Muslims. Who standby while while a MUSLIMA is abused before our very eyes.

Pay attention.... as this KAAFIR takes up the banner we should be carrying and writes in support of sister Aafia Sidduiqi.​

THE SERVICE AND SACRIFICE OF ALL AMERICAN WAR VETERANS IS AT STAKE

MY HONOR IS NOT FOR SALE, NOT FOR A LIE​

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Veterans Today Editors, Jeff Gates, Raja Mujtaba and I were in the ****** region over the last couple of weeks. Jeff and I are Vietnam veterans, Raja a decorated combat veteran, tank commander, from the India/Pakistan war. We met dozens of Pakistani military, including nearly all of their highest ranking retired officers, from Admiral Sirohey, Chairman of their Joint Chiefs of Staff to General Alsam Beg, Head of the Army to Lt. General Hamid Gul, former head of the ISI. In our party were our other Veterans Today contributors, BG Asif Haroon Raja and BG Raza Ali, of “Charlie Wilson’s War” fame.

Today, I received an email from Admiral Sirohey. His office is lined with memorabilia from a long career of service, service as an ally and friend of the United States. Sirohey and the rest were America’s most stalwart allies during the Cold War. These were the real allies that helped us bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union. I was honored to be among them. Today Admiral Sirohey is scheduled to attend a rally protesting the illegal kidnapping, brutalizing and conviction of Dr. Affia Siddiqui. America’s best friends in Asia, the finest soldiers in the world are horrified at what we have done.

Can it be that bad?

VETERANS TODAY EDITORS RAJA MUJTABA AND JEFF GATES, ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, FEBRUARY 2010 (PHOTO BY GORDON DUFF)

The Bush administration, when it saw its “War on Terror” wasn’t getting enough suspects, hired drug cartel members and criminal elements to kidnap innocent civilians to fill our secret prisons. Yes, we actually did this. In this case, we kidnapped a mother with 3 children, tortured her for years, murdered a small child and then charged her with attempting to murder her captors after years in a secret prison on Bagram Air Force Base.

Every soldier on that base, everyone who has served there has to live with the dishonor of this act until something is done. Remember when America, after World War II painted the people of Germany with the stain of guilt for not knowing about the death camps? Tell me what is different here? We didn’t know that druglords and gangsters were stealing people off the street to fill our prisons with “terror suspects” so Bush/Ashcroft and Cheney could crow about their successes?

If you didn’t know before, this is what all the secret “torture memos” were all about, not real terrorists, but innocent people we “bought” as though we were slave runners of old.

A few years after we bought our phony terror suspects, tortured, raped and brutalized them, most were released. They had committed no crime other than to be standing on the wrong dark street corner when the druglords working for Bush were out hunting “meat” for America’s gulags.

Dr. Aafia had to be convicted, had to be jailed and silenced. The crimes against her and her children were so heinous, only a kangaroo court in America, a country whose news is orchestrated by the Islam hating MSM/Corporate media and powerful Israeli/AIPAC lobby would have the audiacity to bring her to trial.

Do we need to review the case? Remember the OJ case? He was released because of a glove not fitting. Dr. Aafia was shot by the “translator” during her “debriefing.”

She has a Doctorate from an American university. She comes from a country where everyone speaks English. “If the translator doesn’t fit, you must acquit!”

Do we now call a person with a cattle prod a “translator?”

When the My Lai massacre happened, I was with a Marine unit less than 50 miles away. All of us who were there then, not so many are around any more, carry the stain of that dishonor and have for decades. I can talk of honor or service but all people see is babies and their mothers, shot to death, lining the bottom of a ditch.

It is a matter of honor.

There are no “secret prisons” and nobody is tortured without someone knowing about it. We are all responsible, I don’t care if you are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere around the world, active duty, reserve, National Guard, retiree or veteran. We are nearly 30 million strong. Many of us don’t have much, memories, wounds, a small pension and our honor.

Our silence strips our honor away.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was not a terrorist. The newspapers lied, we all know why. Either she is guilty or we all are. Better to destroy her than to arrest those guilty of real crimes, arrest people some of us voted into high office.

“We were just taking orders.”

Where have we heard that before, Nuremberg? It isn’t just this one life. We already killed over a million people in our ill fated invasion of Iraq.

Fog of War. We know better, everyone with eyes to see knows better, know it now. Then why are we still acting like criminals? No more lies. We are at war, a war with real enemies. We have so little, our short lives, our families and what we believe in.

Did a tiny crippled woman, illegally imprisoned for years try to murder a room of FBI, Special Forces and Blackwater/CIA operatives?

I can tell you this: If I get my butt kicked by a 100 pound woman in a wheel chair, you won’t see me in front of a jury in New York City crying for my mama.

The only possible answer is that everyone involved in the trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is a liar. Nothing else is possible. I know why they lied, they were ordered to “for the good of the service.” Was there something in the oath involving “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America unless told to lie for the good of the service?”

What are we protecting?

Once the public learns that we are buying phony terror suspects from the worlds largest drug dealers, people we are protecting, people flooding our streets with narcotics, there might be problems. Best not let the public know why we never found those weapons of mass destruction, that yellow cake uranium, those mobile bio-weapons labs or why our continual search for Osama bin Laden keeps failing.

The deal of the century, destroying an innocent life and earning the hate of a valued ally, all to stand behind the lies and rhetoric of America’s “dark age.” We would be lucky if it were only every citizen of Pakistan that was enraged at us for this travesty. It is worse, far worse.

Who are the real terrorists? In Pakistan, Admiral Sirohey, friend to half a dozen American Presidents is heading to a peaceful protest. What can we, Americans, claim? If kidnapping, torture, rape and covering it up by letting the victim rot in prison isn’t terrorism, I don’t know what is.

We should be thankful for that seat on the UN Security Council. We may need it for more than covering up for Israel. The next nation facing sanctions for international crimes may be us. All that stands between us and being cut off from the world is our veto. All that is keeping an entire administration from War Crimes trials is the Bush administrations withdrawal from the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

Why is President Obama allowing the outrages of the Bush administration to continue?



Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and a regular contributor to Veterans Today. He specializes in political and social issues. You can see a large collection of Gordon's published articles at this link: http://www.VeteransToday.com. He is an outspoken advocate for veterans and his powerful words have brought about change.

You can send Gordon Duff an email at this address: Gpduf@aol.com

If you are feeling a sharp sensation in the pit of your stomach, don't worry that is shame, its sting can easily be dulled by actively helping the cause of Aafia. Even passing on of information is help.​

Your brother in Islam



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[Abdullah-Khan]

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This is the MOST detailed description and analysis of Aafia Plight that I have come across.... and yet again, it is from a KAAFIR (refer to my early statement about this term)
Take notice of the disgruntled ex-husband of Affia​

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WHO IS AAFIA SIDDIQUI: TERRORIST OR GOVERNMENT PAWN?​

The Tragic Case of the “The Gray Lady of Bagram”​

By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

The U.S. Government contends Aafia Siddiqui’s alleged links to terrorism began in June 2001—some three months before the 9/11 terror attacks on New York City’s Twin Towers. According to government sources, Siddiqui made a trip from Quetta, Pakistan to Monrovia, Liberia, where she was met by a car and driven to the Hotel Boulevard, a known al Qaeda safe house. A week later Siddiqui allegedly left Monrovia in the same inauspicious manner in which she arrived—the only difference being is that she carried with her a large parcel of Africa’s illegal diamonds, a hard-to-trace but key funding source for al Qaeda’s terror operations.

Nearly three years later on May 26, 2004 former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller held a new conference during which they announced the government had received reports that al Qaeda planned terror attacks in the U.S. that summer or fall. Director Mueller specifically named Aafia Siddiqui as “an al-Qaeda operative and facilitator” and one of the seven al-Qaeda suspects being sought in connection with the impending terror plots. Attorney General Ashcroft added the seven suspects posed “a clear and present danger” to America and should be “considered armed and dangerous.”

As soon as Siddiqui’s photo was displayed during the Ashcroft/Mueller news conference an informant was convinced Siddiqui was the same woman who went to Monrovia in June 2001 and left with the package of illegal diamonds. The informant called the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which was investigating Africa’s illegal diamond trade, and reported Siddiqui’s alleged ties to the diamond trade on behalf of al Qaeda.

Siddiqui’s family vigorously disputes the notion that Aafia was ever in Monrovia. They say she was living in the Back Bay Manor in Roxbury, Massachusetts taking care of her own three children and her sister’s child (while the sister finished a fellowship in neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital), as well as being a wife to her husband who was an anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Elaine Whitefield Sharp, Aafia Siddiqui’s attorney, told Boston Magazine in 2004 that she could prove her client was in Boston in June 2001. Proving Siddiqui was never in Monrovia is crucial, says Sharp, because it undermines the Government’s accusations that she is a terrorist.

There are no substantial trail signs from Siddiqui’s past to support the charges that she not only became a violent jihadist but a major player in al Qaeda’s inner circle who helped formulate sophisticated terror plans to attack the United States. She was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1972, one of three children from a prominent family. Her father, Mohammad Siddiqui, obtained his medical education and degree as a doctor in England and her mother Ismet was a homemaker.

All three Siddiqui family children are educated professionals. Aafia’s brother is an architect who lives in Houston with his pediatrician wife and their children. Aafia’s sister trained at Harvard to become a neurologist and worked at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore before returning to Pakistan several years ago. Aafia herself moved to Houston in 1990 to be closer to her brother, and after attending the University of Houston for just one year, her grades were so outstanding she was accepted at MIT.

While at MIT, Siddiqui joined an association of Muslim students and wrote pamphlets trying to teach others about Islam. “She was religious, but that wasn’t unusual [at MIT],” one former MIT student recalled for Boston Magazine. Another student agreed: “She was just nice and soft-spoken. She was not terribly assertive.” As a biology major at MIT, Siddiqui won a $5,000 grant she used to study the effects of Islam on women in Pakistan.

Aafia’s family reportedly became concerned after their daughter graduated from MIT that she had not married. So they arranged a marriage for her to Mohammed Amjad Khan who was medical student from a wealthy family in Pakistan and who, like Aafia, was studying in Boston to get his medical degree. Khan seemed to the Siddiqui family to be a mainstream Muslim trying to make a successful life in America. He apparently even encouraged Aafia to pursue her education—something she did. She enrolled at Brandeis University as a graduate student in “cognitive neuroscience,” reported Boston Magazine, after graduating from MIT.

Tragically, these extraordinary educational achievements would have devastating consequences on Siddiqui’s public image after the 2004 Ashcroft/Mueller news conference. Members of the media, always game for a sensational angle, true or not, began to attach the following titles to her name: neurologist, geneticist, and microbiologist. The media parlayed these manufactured titles into evidence of Siddiqui’s skills to produce potentially horrific terror plots against the United States.

“They [the media] started with the whole idea that Aafia was involved in biochemical warfare,” Sharp told Boston Magazine. “She wasn’t taking brains cells and testing how they reacted to gases. But there’s all this news in the media about the changing face of Al Qaeda and the neurology scare, and now we’ve got this MIT graduate with a Brandeis PhD who’s cooking up all these viruses.”

When asked by Boston Magazine if Siddiqui’ training at Brandeis could be used for terrorism activities, Paul DiZio, a professor of cognitive neuroscience who sat on Siddiqui’s dissertation committee, had to laugh. “I can’t see how it can be applied to anything,” he said. “It’s not very applied work. It didn’t have a medical aspect to it. And, as a computer expert, she was competent. But you know, call her a mastermind or something does not seem – I never saw any evidence [of that].”

Actually at this point in her life Aafia Siddiqui was grappling more with a deteriorating marriage than anything else. Her husband was about to complete his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She had virtually given up all thought of having a career outside the marriage, and she was facing tremendous pressure from Khan, who according to Siddiqui’s family, wanted to return with the children to Pakistan where he could raise them as conservative Muslims. Aafia wanted to live in the West and keep the children under her mainstream Islamic tutelage.

The Iman of The Mosque for the Praising of Allah in Roxbury did not see any evidence of Aafia being a “fundamentalist” Muslim. “What I know of her,” Abdullah Farung told Boston Magazine, “is that she was living here in America, and her organization (which distributed Korans and books to prisons and school campuses) was for sharing Islamic information with the American people..” Farung added that Aafia often told him: “’As long as it’s not evil, I can do it. I show my hands, show my face, I drive my own car. I have my credit cards.’” Farung said Aafia told him that because she wanted him to know that “she was an American girl. Put that down: Aafia Siddiqui was an American girl. And a good sister.”

The Iman of the Islamic Center of New England, Talal Eid, shared the same view of Aafia. He was particularly impressed with her efforts to raise money to help Bosnian orphans. “You know,” he told Boston Magazine, “we were all active, but to see a woman who was active in this way was really something nice.”

There were actually more public signs that Khan (who bitterly denounced his former wife earlier this year as a violent jihadist) was associated with radical Islam than Aafia. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the FBI began a nationwide search of any connections between Muslims in America and Saudi nationals, especially connections associated with financial transactions. The agency instructed the nation’s banking institutions to review their records for any suspicious transactions.

These efforts prompted the FBI to focus its attention on Khan and Aafia. The Fleet National Bank in Boston, where the couple had accounts, began tracing money received by its Saudi national account holders from the Saudi Embassy. One of those customers, Hatem Al Dhahri, listed his address as the same address of the condo in which the Siddiqui’s lived. Another Saudi national bank customer, Abdullah Al Reshood, received a $20,000 wire transfer from the Saudi government in the weeks prior to 9/11, drawing the attention of the FBI. A Saudi government official would later explain to the Boston Globe that the money had been sent to Al Reshood to pay for medical treatment for his wife. These financial inquiries also discovered that Al Dhahri and Al Reshood had taken over the lease of the Siddiqui condo because, as the Siddiqui family explained, the couple was planning to move. However, these connections and financial transactions, coupled with Aafia’s regular debit-card payments to Benevolence International (a charity organization banned by the U.N. after 9/11), did attract attention from the FBI on Aafia.

But it was actions by Khan that drew the most attention from the FBI after the agency discovered through the financial investigations that he had been purchasing what the agency called “high-tech military equipment.” The equipment included night-vision goggles, body armor, and military manuals Khan planned to send to Pakistan. The FBI called the couple in for questioning, but after incidental questioning, the agency released Aafia. The FBI continued its questioning of Khan. In addition to the military equipment purchases, the FBI was also interested in what they described as “major purchases” from U.S. airlines and hotels in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, as well as an $8,000 international wire transfer to the Habib Bank in Pakistan in December 2001, from accounts associated with Khan and Aafia.

Shortly after this FBI attention, Khan and Aafia returned to Pakistan saying it was too difficult for Muslims to live in the U.S. after 9/11. They did not stay long before returning to America where they remained several more months before once again returning to Pakistan. The moving was hard on Aafia. She was pregnant with a third child and the tension between her and Khan had escalated to the point they were force to separate. Aafia moved in with her parents while Khan lived elsewhere in Karachi.

Sharp told Boston Magazine that Khan went to Aafia’s parents’ house with a letter stating his intentions to seek a formal divorce. A bitter argument ensued between Aafia’s parents and Khan, and it became so intense that it triggered a fatal heart attack with Aafia’s father. Aafia gave birth to a son several weeks after her father’s death.

In December 2002, Aafia returned to the United States alone. She took a job in Baltimore to be close to her sister who was then working at the Sinai Hospital. Sharp told Boston Magazine that Aafia obtained job interviews at Johns Hopkins and SUNY. The FBI, however, had other ideas about why she returned to America. The agency believed she returned to open a post office box for Majid Khan—an al Qaeda operative reportedly under the control of Khalid Sheik Mohammed who, the FBI believed, was plotting to blow up fuel tanks and gas stations in the Baltimore-Washington area. Siddiqui’s family strenuously disputes this FBI claim, saying they did not believe Aafia opened a post office box but if she did, it was to receive replies from her job search efforts and not for any terror-related reasons.

Whatever the purpose of Aafia’s return to America in December 2002, her case took a bizarre, and still unexplained, turn after March 1, 2003 when Pakistani authorities arrested Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was turned over to U.S. authorities, and in the days and weeks after being given to the Americans, Mohammed was subjected to a litany of horrific CIA torture methods, including dozens of water boarding episodes. This mastermind, who was one of the FBI’s original 22 Most Wanted Terrorists after 9/11, gave up the name, rank, and serial number of every Muslim suspect in the world, including Aafia Siddiqui. It was apparently through the Mohammed torture sessions that the FBI gained information from the CIA that Siddiqui had rented the post office box in Baltimore for Majid Khan. The FBI (or CIA) leaked this information to the media because CNN reported about the claim on April 3, 2003—just four weeks after Mohammed’s capture. Apparently, every name the CIA torturers put before him, Mohammed readily agreed was involved in some sort of “terror plot.” Whatever the CIA wanted, Khalid gave to them.

And the government continued to dribble these “terror plot” leaks to the media during the ensuing months of Khalid’s capture. For example, the Boston Herald reported shortly after Khalid’s arrest that Siddiqui had been linked to Adrian El Shulrijumah “whose name surfaced among the belongings of [Mohammed].” The fact that Aafia was the first woman with ties to al Qaeda being sought by the FBI captured the media’s insatiable need for sensationalism. UPI on March 29, 2003 carried an international report that said the FBI was convinced Siddiqui was a “fixer” who moved al Qaeda money around to support the group’s terror operations.

Then the Siddiqui saga took still another bizarre turn. The Press Trust of India in April 2003 reported Aafia had been arrested at a relative’s residence in Karachi just after returning from an overseas trip. The India-based news organization reported Siddiqui was in the custody of the FBI and was being questioned by the agency. U.S. intelligence sources confirmed to this foreign news organization that Siddiqui was “essentially” in the hands of the FBI.

Aafia’s mother, however, was not aware of any arrest of her daughter at a relative’s residence. The last time she saw Aafia was about a month after Mohammed’s arrest when her daughter and three children got into a taxi and headed for a local train station. After that, the mother says Aafia and her children seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. A few days after her daughter’s disappearance, Aafia’s mother was visited by a man on a motorcycle who told her Aafia was being held and that if she ever wanted to see her daughter and grandchildren again, she had better keep quiet.

This story tracks with one relating to Aafia’s uncle who began talking publicly about his niece’s arrest. These public comments about an “arrest” captured both the attention and concern of the FBI. The agency immediately issued an official statement that it had no knowledge about either Siddiqui’s arrest or detention. This statement was contradicted by an initial Pakistani Urdu press report which said Siddiqui and her children had been seen being taken into custody by Pakistani authorities. A spokesman for Pakistan’s interior ministry and two unnamed U.S. officials confirmed the arrest, but, strangely, these same officials several days later backtracked from their initial Siddiqui arrest confirmation, telling the media it was unlikely Siddiqui was in custody.

At this juncture Aafia’s mother was hysterical. She flew to New York City to see if she could find out what happened to her daughter and grandchildren. She was met at the JKF Airport by men she thought represented the U.S. government and who were there to help her find her daughter.

“She’s detained for four hours by the FBI, NYPD, Homeland Security,” attorney Sharp told Boston Magazine. “She thinks they’re all there to help her. That’s how naïve she was. And she’s crying and saying, ‘Tell me where my daughter is,’ and they don’t know where her daughter is and they let her go.”

Aafia’s sister went to the airport, picked up her mother, and took her back to Baltimore with her. “And the next thing they know,” attorney Sharp continued, ‘there’s a knock at the door, and it’s the FBI and they’re very aggressively saying a subpoena for Ismet Siddiqui [Aafia’s mother] to come here to Boston to testify before a grand jury.”

In the days after the subpoena was served on Ismet Siddiqui, she and her daughter and son all met with FBI agents and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston. “We gave them everything,” Sharp says. “And they’re saying, ‘We still think she has another life that you don’t know about.’”

This position taken by the FBI defied its own Seeking Information Alert which had been released immediately after the May 2004 Ashcroft/Mueller news conference. While the FBI director had specifically called Aafia “an al-Qaeda operative and facilitator” who was wanted in connection “with possible terrorist threats against the United States” during the news conference, the actual Alert was not so specific: “Although the FBI has no information indicating this individual (Siddiqui) is connected to specific terrorist activities, the FBI would still like to locate and question this individual.”

The weeks passed into months and months into years as the Aafia Siddiqui disappearance mystery assumed international proportions. In July 2004 al Qaeda operative Ahmed Khalfan Ghallini, facing a U.S. indictment in connection with the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, was captured by Pakistani forces in a joint operation with the U.S. Several press reports following his arrest linked Aafia Siddiqui to al Qaeda illegal diamond trade in Liberia. The Boston Globe at the time reported that the week Aafia allegedly spent in Monrovia in June 2001 was at the personal invitation of then Liberian President (and now convicted war criminal) Charles Taylor. Once again the media was tying Aafia to terrorism activity without any real factual basis.

By 2007 most of the people who knew Aafia feared she and her children were dead, even though Human Rights Watch reported in February of that year that Siddiqui may have been held in one of the CIA’s “black site” prisons where both captured and illegally kidnapped terror suspects were held for torture interrogations. In March 2007 former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan’s Supreme Court Chief Justice lftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry who was then leading an investigation into the secret detentions and disappearances of over 500 Pakistanis, including Siddiqui

Then in 2008 reports began to circulate about “The Gray lady of Begram,” the infamous military prison in Afghanistan long suspected of being a torture facility worse than Guantanamo Bay. The first legitimate reports about this “gray lady” came from a British journalist named Yvonne Ridley who told Daily Times of Pakistan on July 7, 2008 about a Pakistani woman who had been held for years in solitary confinement in the Begram Theater Internment facility. Ridley went on to write about this “Prisoner 650” who had endured torture and repeated rapes over a four-year period. It was Ridley who coined the term “gray lady” of Begram because the prisoner appeared to be a “ghost” who agonizing cries and screams forever haunted those who heard them. “This would never happen to a Western woman,” Ridley eloquently wrote.

Ridley’s account about the “gray lady” of Bagram gained credence when other former Bagram prisoners began to speak about “prisoner 650.” The Daily Times and Adnkronos News Service in Pakistan even reported that “prisoner 650” had gone insane and cried all the time.

The mystery of Aafia Siddiqui suddenly exploded into the public arena again on July 17, 2008 when she, and her oldest son, were reportedly arrested by Afghanistan National Police in Ghazni near the residence of the provincial governor. According to a federal indictment issued in the Southern District of New York, Siddiqui had in her possession handwritten notes that referred to a “mass casualty attack” and listed various locations including the Empire State Building, Plum Island, the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The indictment further alleged that the handwritten notes contained information about a “dirty bomb,” chemical and biological weapons, and other explosives along with a mortality rate for each weapon.

The government further charged that on July 18, 2008, a team of military and law enforcement personnel, along with interpreters assisting them, went to the Afghanistan National Police compound in Ghazni to interview Siddiqui. The team was escorted to a room where the interview was to be conducted. A curtain separated the interview room from another room. Siddiqui was reportedly in the adjacent room unbeknownst to the U.S. team. The military personnel rested their guns against a wall at which time Siddiqui allegedly grabbed one of the weapons and shot one of the military personnel with it. She was also wounded before being restrained. In addition to terror-related charges, she was indicted for the attempted murder of a U.S. national.

On August 4, 2008, Aafia Siddiqui was returned to New York to face the criminal charges against her. When she appeared before a federal Magistrate Judge that day, Siddiqui refused to accept the charges brought against her by the U.S. government. Her attorney at the time, Elizabeth Fink, told the Magistrate Judge that no one could believe anything the FBI said about the case and argued there was evidence to show Siddiqui had actually been arrested in Karachi in March 2003 along with her three children.

As a matter of fact, The Daily Times reported on August 8, 2008 that official documents existed which proved Aafia and her three children had been arrested in Pakistan in March 2003—not in Afghanistan in 2008 as alleged by U.S. authorities. The newspaper stated that “sources close to the matter claimed the Interior Ministry asked the provincial home departments for detailed reports on missing persons a couple of weeks ago, and that the list prepared by the Sindh Home Department included Dr. Siddiqui and her three children, Maryam, Admed and Suleman. The report confirmed MI detained Dr. Siddiqui and her three children in Gulsham-e-Igbal on March 30, 2003, later handing her over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

Regardless of the government involved, no official report prepared by any foreign authority has ever coincided with American accounts in the case. For example, the highly respected news wire service Reuters reported that Afghan officials offered a different version about Siddiqui alleged capture in Ghazni. The Afghan National Police were reportedly suspicious when they saw Siddiqui and her teenage son in the vicinity of the Governor’s mansion and took the pair into custody. Reuters reported a dispute erupted between Afghan and American officials the following day over Siddiqui’ custody. Reuters went on to say American military personnel disarmed the Afghan police and proceeded to shoot Siddiqui who was neither armed nor resisting. The Reuters report explained the shooting this way:

“U.S. soldiers then proceeded to disarm the Afghan police at which point Siddiqui approached the Americans complaining of mistreatment by the police. U.S. troops, the officer said, ‘thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and took her.”

On August 11, 2008, Siddiqui appeared before a federal judge in a wheel chair. Attorney Fink pleaded with the magistrate to order medical care for her client. Reuters reported Fink told the judge: “She has been here, judge, for one week and she has not seen a doctor, even they [U.S. authorities] know she has been shot.” Christoper LaVigne, one of the prosecutors in the case, defended the lack of medical care on the grounds that Siddiqui is a “high-security risk.” Judge Robert Pitman was not impressed with that justification, ordering government prosecutors to make sure Siddiqui was seen b a doctor within 24 hours.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan immediately charged that during her captivity Siddiqui had a kidney removed; her teeth removed; her nose broken and improperly set; and that her gun shot wound had not been properly treated. Another Reuters report followed up these charges that Siddiqui believed she had lost part of her intestines as a result of the gun shot; that she was still suffering from internal bleeding. “Lawyers for Siddiqui said last week she appeared confused and did not know where she had been,” Reuters added, “except to claim that she was held captive by unknown authorities in a small room.”

After years of isolation and torture, enhanced interrogation techniques, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui consistently refused to communicate with her attorneys, to participate in the preliminary trial proceedings against her, or to accept any medical or mental health assistance/treatment from prison officials. The court ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons to conduct a psychological evaluation of Aafia which found that she is suffering from a “depressive type psychosis.” Based on this preliminary diagnosis, the government requested that the court find reasonable cause to believe Siddiqui is suffering from a mental disease or defect which could prevent her from understanding the court proceedings against her. In an extraordinary move, the government itself asked the court to conduct a competency hearing.

Citing the lack of adequate professional psychiatric treatment available at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center, Siddiqui’s attorneys further requested, over strenuous objections by the prosecution, that their client be transferred to a state mental health facility where she could receive badly needed mental health treatment.

The district court brushed aside both these requests, and on July 29, 2009, found Siddiqui was competent to stand trial. In a written order, the court stated (1) that Siddiqui had “sufficient present ability to consult with her lawyers with a reasonable degree of rational understanding and she also has a rational as well as a factual understanding of the proceedings against her;” and (2) “this is an instance where a defendant may have some mental health issues but may nevertheless be competent to stand trial.”

It is obvious that the trial judge, the Honorable Richard M. Berman, was determined to have a trial of the merits. However, because of the convoluted history of Aafia Siddiqui case, a reasonable assumption could be made that the government did not want this case to come to trial; that it would have preferred a ruling from the court that Siddiqui was incompetent to stand trial—a ruling that would have resulted in her being carted off to a federal psychiatric facility where she would have once again disappeared into a an official “black hole” in the federal prison bureaucracy. Famed Louisiana criminal defense attorney Jack Martzell once observed to a client that the federal prison system has the unfettered power to make any prisoner disappear, even from his own attorney.

But then the Pakistani government developed an acute interest in the Siddiqui case. On July 21, 2009, the Pakistani Ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, spoke with Siddiqui by telephone and informed her that the Pakistani government was making efforts on her behalf. The Pakistani government sought out and secured the legal services of a high-profile defense team with expertise in the kind of charges the U.S. government has brought against Siddiqui to take over her defense. The team included Charles Swift who gained international recognition for his representation of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan.

Even before the new defense team came on board, Siddiqui’s other attorneys had already mounted an aggressive defense in her case. One of the most impressive defenses made by the team was a challenge to the government’s authority to prosecute Siddiqui for the attempted murder of the U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. In support of a motion to dismiss this particular charge, the attorneys argued:

“We should note from the outset that defense counsel’s challenge to the extraterritorial application of sections 111, 924© and 1114 of Title 18 in the context of an alleged assault on a soldier while in a war zone is ‘novel’ (the government’s word) only because the government is for the first time invoking these sections in such a context. In this instance, to be fair, we credit the government with novelty rather than ourselves.

“As for the government’s attempt to ‘eviscerate’ our argument by noting that the team that came to interview Dr. Siddiqui was comprised of some persons who were not in the ‘uniformed services’—agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for example—we must remind the government that … United States Army Officer Two is identified as the main target of the assault. While the government may wish that the presence of non-uniform federal employees turned the so-called Interview Team into the investigatory and/or law enforcement team protected by those statutes, we respectfully submit that the substantial presence of the United States military persons comprising the Interview Team broadcasts loudly and clearly that this was a military operation occurring in a war zone. Thus, contrary to the government’s argument, the fact that the visit to Dr. Siddiqui by United States military personnel was a military operation places this case clearly beyond the holdings [of established case law].

“In divining whether Congress intended section 1114 of Title 18 to be used in the context of assaults on military troops in war zones abroad, both parties have focused on the words ‘(including any member of the uniformed services)’ that were added to section 1114 in the 1996 amendment. For the government, these words somehow make ‘plain’ that the provision assumes extraterritorial application because it contemplates the indictment of those who assault United States servicemen deployed to war zones abroad because that is where they ‘primarily face danger.’

“But the government’s interpretation is not in accord with the history of section 1114. Until the amendment of 1996, section 1114 was principally a list of federal officers and employees beginning with United States federal judges, moving to United States attorneys and their assistants to United States marshals and then to officers and employees of non-uniform agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Postal Service, Secret Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency. A cursory glance at this version of section 1114 makes it abundantly clear that the officers and employees contemplated by the statute are those associated with investigation and law enforcement and not military operations.

“In the 1996 amendment, the language of which is the same as the current language Congress clearly wished to abandon the use of a list that enumerated officers and employees of the United States covered by the statute. In its place, Congress offered a statute that used general language that would be construed in line with the list that preceded. Presumably because some of the enumerated officers and employees in the pre-1996 statute were those who wore uniforms—Coast Guard members and officers of the Park Service, for example—the present language of ‘(including any member of the uniformed services)’ was added to ensure they were covered by the statute.

“The 1996 Amendment must be viewed as merely editorial in intent (i.e., replacing enumeration with general terms) because there was absolutely no pronouncement of a radical change in the sweep of this statute to include extraterritorial applications such as assaults on United States military personnel engaged in war abroad in the discussion of the purpose and legislative history of the act of which the 1996 Amendment was a small part. Nor is there any discussion of the larger significance of the 1996 Amendment where it is proposed in the actual bill. Thus, the plain language of section 1114, both pre- and post-1996 Amendment, indicates that its application was limited to investigatory and law enforcement officers and employees, and most definitely not to those engaged in military operations abroad.

“ … If the government’s argument is to be viewed as the correct one, then any foreigner whose nation is at war with the United States who attacks any member of the United States military is amenable to criminal proceedings in the United States pursuant to section 1114. Not only does such a scenario not make sense, it contravenes international law in the form of the Geneva Conventions, which views enemy combatants as protected persons.

“Article 4 of the Third Geneva Conventions generally protects prisoners of war for their combatant activities, and particularly Article 89 and 92 of the Third Geneva Convention. Article 92 makes a prisoner of war who attempts to escape and is recaptured before having made good such an escape liable only to disciplinary punishment prescribed under Articles 89 and 90. Articles 89 and 90 limit disciplinary punishment to 30 days confinement and Article 97 further prescribes that prisoners may not be transferred to a penitentiary establishment to undergo disciplinary procedure therein. Accordingly, a prisoner of war that attempts to escape by grabbing a weapon and firing at his captors would certainly risk being killed or injured himself, and liable for 30 days disciplinary punishment should he be re-captured, but he would not be facing attempted murder charges. Even if Dr. Siddiqui were judged not to be a prisoner of war, she would nevertheless be protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting persons in occupied territories.

“If not a combatant, Dr. Siddiqui would almost certainly be judged as a saboteur under the facts presumed by the government, or a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power. Article 5 of the Fourth Geneva Convention indicates that such persons not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. Article 66 of the Convention permits the occupying power to hand the accused over to a properly constituted, non-political military court on the condition that said courts sit in the occupied countries. Accordingly, the Geneva Convention specifically forbids what has been done in Dr. Siddiqui case, that is, to transfer her to a civilian tribunal not sitting in the occupied territory.

“In order to avoid a collision between the Geneva Convention and section 1114 of Title 18 of the United States Code, the latter cannot be viewed as criminalizing attacks of United States military personnel engaged in military operations in a theater of war by perceived enemy combatants.” [Internal citations in motion omitted]

Why did the government elect to prosecute Aafia Siddiqui for attempted murder under section 1114 of Title 18 when it had already secured an indictment of her as a “terrorist” under section 2332(b) of Title 18 which would have resulted in a mandatory life sentence if convicted?

We can only suspect the government was not confident of its ability to prove a terrorism case against Siddiqui under section 2332(b); therefore, it used the attempted murder charge under section 1114 as a fall back position. Whatever the reason for the government’s attempt to prosecute under section 1114, for which we do not believe it had the authority, it is clear that the U.S. government wanted Aafia Siddiqui to permanently disappear, either in a federal psychiatric facility or in one of its “super max” federal prisons.

On February 3, 2010, an eight-woman and four-man federal jury found Aafia Siddiqui guilty after hearing nearly two-weeks of evidence. The trial began with unfortunate and intemperate outbursts by the mentally beaten down “Lady Al Qaeda” (as she was dubbed with prejudice by government officials) and ended with the same kind of outburst: “This is a verdict coming from Israel, not America,” Siddiqui said while being led from a Manhattan courtroom. “That’s where the anger belongs. I can testify to this. And I have proof.”

Siddiqui’s defense team promised an appeal of the guilty verdict, saying she was too mentally incompetent to stand trial. The MIT-trained neuroscientist will be sentenced on May 6, 2010 when she will face the reality of what will most likely equate to a life sentence in federal prison.

Opposing parties had different takes on the final outcome of this bizarre case. “Juries do make mistakes,” said Elaine Sharp, one of Siddiqui’s attorneys. “Juries do go wrong. In my opinion, this verdict is based on fear, not fact.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, on the other hand, believed the jury did its job: “Today, a jury brought Aafia Siddiqui to justice in a court of law for trying to murder American military and law enforcement officers, as well as their Afghan colleagues.”

Even accepting the jury’s verdict that Siddiqui is guilty, there is substantial evidence that she has been treated abominably by the U.S. government, particularly if she was secretly held in solitary confinement at the Begram torture facility between 2003 and 2008. She now faces a life sentence in a “super-max” federal prison—a prospect that certainly is not going to help our relations with Pakistan, particularly as we try to encourage that country to upgrade its “war efforts” against the al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents attacking U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government does not believe Siddiqui is “Lady Al Qaeda” and spent $2 million on a defense team to prove it.

The Aafia Siddiqui case now stands as a horrible reminder of the unlawful legacy of former President George W. Bush’s declared “war on terror.” Foreign citizens were kidnapped and tortured during the Bush administration—many of whom have now been declared “innocent” by our own government.

Given the mystery of the years of her unexplained absence and the government’s obvious attempts at secrecy and deception, we may never know the truth of Aafia Siddiqui’s case. What we do know is the government’s failure to openly and honestly discuss the facts of her case, as well as the events leading to her arrest and detention, has permanently tainted the legitimacy of her conviction for millions of observers from around the world.

And whatever else any one may think about the Siddiqui case, it clearly demonstrates that the American federal court system is capable of handling “terrorism” cases. Siddiqui was foreign born and captured on foreign soil, but tried in an American civilian courtroom. This fact seriously undercuts claims by those who say that all “terrorism” cases, especially those involving foreign born suspects captured outside the United States, should be tried before military tribunals.

SOURCES:

www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/whos_afraid_of_aafia_siddiqui/
Wekipedia, Aafia Siddiqui
Court documents, United States of America v. Aafia Siddiqui, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Case No. 08 cr. 826 (RMB)
Aafia Siddiqui’s attorneys: Dawn M. Cardi, Dawn M. Cardi & Associates, New York, New York; Elaine Whitfield Sharp, Marblehead, Massachusetts; Linda Moreno, Tampa, Florida; and Charles Swift, Swift & McDonald, Seattle, Washington.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/u...how/5482414.cms
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2...ed_murder_.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/2...ddiqui-al-qaida
The intelligence factory: How America makes its enemies disappear?By Petra Bartosiewicz (Harper's Magazine)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04siddiqui.html

By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John T. Floyd, Federal Criminal Lawyer: A Premier Criminal Defense Lawyer Defending Individuals and Businesses Accused of Serious Crimes in Houston, Throughout Texas and in Federal Court Across the United States. John T. Floyd is one of Houston’s top criminal defense lawyers with an unblemished reputation for providing faithful and dedicated representation to his clients. He has committed his entire professional career, as a criminal defense attorney, to providing the best possible criminal defense representation to clients not only in Houston but throughout the State of Texas and in federal courts nationwide.

And he's a KAAFIR....... so what are you doing O Muslim?​

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[DontKhanMe]

Subhanallah - May Allah for give me - i feel such shame - We are not muslim - we are not men

 

[Abdullah-Khan]

Subhanallah - May Allah for give me - i feel such shame - We are not muslim - we are not men

Brother the intention of furnishing you this information is not to humiliate you. This has already been done. But rather the intention of posting these updates are for you to wake up, reflex and take back you honor. As i said earlier, the mere spreading of the word and encouraging other can and will help sister Aafia so just do it. and if you can do more than do that.

DO NOT just mope around silently, things can reach boiling point if you express yourself.

 

[DontKhanMe]

Its irony, a lone woman being prisoned since 2003, tortured and injured, morally and physically, is being given verdict on baseless stories and testimonies. Grea work; democracy won; a day of joy for civilized nations; a great achievement of humanity!

Yet the loosers like Bush, Chenney, Blair etc are saints

Time to see 'Braveheart' one more time

 

[Abdullah-Khan]

Subhanallah - May Allah for give me - i feel such shame - We are not muslim - we are not men

Its irony, a lone woman being prisoned since 2003, tortured and injured, morally and physically, is being given verdict on baseless stories and testimonies. Grea work; democracy won; a day of joy for civilized nations; a great achievement of humanity!

Yet the loosers like Bush, Chenney, Blair etc are saints

Time to see 'Braveheart' one more time

The insult was not the trial or finding her guilty or whatever, the insult was that we gave her up ourselves. Why blame them? You sold her for money, now you feel insulted because they found her guilty? At least they tried her, you just gave her up without due process.

 

[Abdullah-Khan]

I just got another update from the PEACE FOR JUSTICE FOUNDATION

THE PEACE AND JUSTICE FOUNDATION
11006 Veirs Mill Rd, STE L-15, PMB 298
Silver Spring, MD. 20902​

Rabi Al-Awal 1431 AH
(March 10, 2010)

"American" Muslim Woman Indicted for Speech!
(Another wake-up call for Muslims in America)


Assalaamu Alaikum (Greetings of Peace):

For some time now I've been cautioning Muslim leaders that, in my humble opinion, the precedent-setting case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is a litmus test on a number of levels; that if the government could get away with completing its horrific assault on this committed Muslim woman (with little or no pushback from the Muslim community) - an assault that began years ago with her abduction in March 2003 - it would be open season on other Muslim women in the West.

The case involving Colleen LaRose, aka Fatima LaRose, aka "Jihad Jane," appears to be the manifestation of that repeatedly stated concern. This sister was reportedly arrested in October of last year, but her arrest is just now becoming fodder for discussion in the public domain - after the unjust but successful conviction of Aafia Siddiqui in an atmosphere of pro-prosecution bigotry!

 

[Abdullah-Khan]

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I want to go back in time.

For those who are not familiar with the details of Aafia's trial, i intend to start a bombardment of post dedicated solely to covering its details (insha'allah). To begin i will link you to a US radio broadcast, the summarizes the charges the U.S government had levied against her, as well as Aafia and her families claim of her being kidnapped from Pakistan, held in secret detention, and tortured. After this radio broadcast i will post a series of day by day written coverage by a non-muslim independent journalist.

I am almost certain that whichever of you "Muslims" who find yourselves believing the kuffaar over our sister Aafia and her family, will be VERY convinced that she has clearly set up (insha'allah). I say this with confidence because i, myself was deluded and foolish enough to believed that she was GUILTY. That was up until trial was underway and the "case" against her was unraveled. So wake up and smell the coffee and please spread the word. Get angry and make others angry and use that energy in a control manner to help our sister. Do not allow these kuffar and their slaves in our government to humiliate us Pakistani citizens through our mothers and daughters. What will other Muslim nations think of us? What will we think of our selves? What will Allah subhanahu wa ta 'ala think of us?

Is not the 'Adhaab of Allah only around the corner.

To begin a U.S Radio broadcast (KPFA) covering Aafia's Trial

http://www.freeaafia.org/multimedia/dr-aafia-audio/175-kpfa-radio-covers-aafias-trial.html







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[Abdullah-Khan]

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Let me begin with an introduction to the non-Muslim Journalist Petra Bartosiewicz​

Petra Bartosiewicz is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her forthcoming book, “The Best Terrorists We Could Find,” an investigation of terrorism trials in the U.S. since 9/11, will be published by Nation Books in 2010. She has written for numerous publications, including The Nation, Mother Jones, The New York Times, Salon.com and Hustler, and has worked in radio for the weekly program, This American Life, where her 2005 piece, “The Arms Trader,” was a finalist for the Livingston Awards and Scripps Howard Awards, and another piece, “The Prosecutor,” won the 2009 Newswomen’s Club of New York Award. She got her start in journalism at The New York Observer and later attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. You can find her investigation of Aafia Siddiqui’s case in the November 2009 issue of Harper’s magazine (www.harpers.org) and at her website www.petrabart.com She can be reached at petrabart@petrabart.com.

USA vs Aafia Siddiqui - Day 1​

20 January 2010

Yesterday the long awaited trial of Aafia Siddiqui began in a federal courtroom in Manhattan. Her case has been one of the most baffling in the annals of post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions. Siddiqui, as regular readers of this website know, is a 37-year-old, MIT-educated neuroscientist, who lived in the U.S. for ten years before mysteriously vanishing from Karachi, her hometown, in 2003, along with her three children, two of whom are American born. For five years her whereabouts remained unknown, while rumors swirled that she was an Al Qaeda operative, and that she had married Ammar al Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and one of the five accused 9/11 plotters expected to face trial in the U.S. In July 2008 she was picked up in Ghazni, Afghanistan on suspicion of being a suicide bomber. The following day, as a team of U.S. soldiers and FBI agents arrived to question her at the police station where she was being held, she allegedly managed to get hold of an M-4 automatic rifle belonging to one of the soldiers, and, according to prosecutors, she opened fire. She hit no one but was herself hit in the abdomen by return fire. What is known is that the U.S. considered Siddiqui to be someone connected to a number of high level terrorism suspects. They say she went on the run and remained underground during her missing years. But human rights groups have long held that Siddiqui is no extremist and believe she was illegally detained and interrogated by Pakistani intelligence at the behest of the U.S. She now faces charges of attempted murder. Her trial is expected to last two weeks.

Jurors heard opening statements from the government and the defense, and the testimony of three government witnesses, U.S. Army Captain Robert Snyder, a former U.S. Army infantry captain named John Threadcraft, and an FBI agent, John Jefferson. Before the jurors were brought in Siddiqui once again protested against being forcibly brought to the courthouse. Judge Richard Berman gave her two options: come to the courthouse and be present during the proceedings, or come to the courthouse and remain in a holding cell next to the courtroom where she could view the proceedings via a television monitor with adjustable volume. But either way, she must come to the courthouse each day, which means undergoing a daily strip search. Despite pleas from both the defense and prosecution to excuse Siddiqui, the judge did not change his position. One of the prosecutors suggested that Siddiqui was being put in a Catch-22 situation, where if she abstained from the proceedings she would still have to go through the strip search which was her primary reason for not wanting to come to court.

Opening statements for the government were made by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna Dabbs, who recounted the events surrounding the shooting incident in Ghazni, Afghanistan in July 2008. She described how the group entered a room on the second floor that was divided by a curtain, and unbeknownst to them behind the curtain was the very woman they were there to see. Seconds later with no warning, the woman grabbed an automatic rifle and through a gap in the curtain she “raised the rifle to her shoulder, and in perfect English, she said, ‘Get out of here!’”

“The defendant saw an opportunity and she acted on it. She picked up an assault rifle, pointed it at the soldiers, and tried to shoot them,” said Dabbs.

“Moments later they were looking down the barrel of a gun. As everyone in the room realized what was happening it was absolute chaos. Everyone ran, jumped, dove, and scrambled.” The interpreter grabbed the rifle by the barrel and stock and tried to pry it out of Siddiqui’s hands. She continued to struggle. She was shot once in the abdomen.

“But the defendant wasn’t done yet,” said Dabbs. Even after she was shot, she struggled and shouted, “I hate Americans,” and “You will die by my blood,” and “Death to America.” She is being tried in the U.S. because the victims of her crime are Americans, said Dabbs.

Dabbs indicated the government would present six eyewitnesses to the shooting. A point of contention between defense and prosecutors has been the admission of the contents of the documents Siddiqui was allegedly found with in Ghazni. Last week the judge ruled these documents could be presented to the jury, and based on today’s proceedings it’s clear they are a centerpiece of the government’s case.

“How are we going to prove the charges?” asked Dabbs. “You’ll hear from soldiers and agents, from an army captain, who only when he saw the defendant slightly fumble with the gun he realized he had a chance to get out.” Other witnesses will include a female Army medic who was seated by the curtain when she saw it move, “almost as if it had been blown by a gust of wind.” The government will present documents that refer to chemical and biological weapons and to attacks on the U.S. The defendant’s fingerprints are on the documents and they are written in her own hand.”

Dabbs also mentioned a few things that the jurors would not see: fingerprints on the M-4 rifle Siddiqui is alleged to have shot, bullet fragments or shell casings from the M-4. The reason for this is that “the chaos that unfolded in that room was quickly matched by chaos at the compound,” namely “dozens and dozens” of Afghan police who were holding automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades. The U.S. soldiers, she said, were not able to return for a week to secure the scene. She said the prosecution will present an expert who will tell the jurors that it is not unusual for an M-4 rifle not to retain fingerprints.

“They’ll never forget the moment they were convinced they were going to die,” said Dubbs of the soldiers in the room where the shooting occurred.

Attorney Charles Swift presented the defense team’s opening statements. “This case is going to come down to a single question,” said Swift. “Did Aafia Siddiqui gain control of an M-4?” Through a series of diagrams of the room where the shooting occurred, Swift reconstructed the timeline of events in the room at the time of the shooting, demonstrating where each of the U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in the room was positioned. He also told the jury the defense would present the testimony of Abdul Qadeer, a detective with the Afghan police, who interviewed Siddiqui after she was brought to the police station. Qadeer questioned Siddiqui, and also apparently admitted to beating her with a cane. But Qadeer was also present when the U.S. team arrived to question Siddiqui, and says he saw a very different scene unfold than what the government alleges. He said he saw the U.S. warrant officer, “walk to the curtain and behind the curtain. What he heard was a struggle and then shots fired. He didn’t see the defendant get a rifle. He saw the rifle near the wall and says he didn’t see the defendant anywhere near it.” Swift also said the defense would prove that while there was ample forensic evidence that Siddiqui was shot (including shell casings, her blood on the carpet, bullet holes in the wall behind her), there was no forensic evidence that Siddiqui fired any shots herself or ever touched the rifle.

Immediately after Swift’s opening statements, the government called its first witness, U.S. Army Captain Robert Snyder, who was present in the room at the Ghazni police station when the shooting occurred. Snyder explained to jurors the basic layout of U.S. military operations in and around Ghazni. When he was asked to summarize the events of July 18, 2008, his response was, “I was almost killed.” He recounted how at around 1 a.m. on July 18, he was awoken by his staff with the news that a woman had been captured with documents that indicated threats against the U.S. “According to Afghan police, the individual appeared to be conducting an attack at the governor’s house,” said Snyder. He said he was shown a series of documents allegedly found on Siddiqui at the time of her arrest. The author of the documents “appeared American or had lived in America.” The documents “very clearly indicated types of attacks,” and “what appeared to be targets in New York City.”

As the prosecutor began to show some of the documents to the jury, Siddiqui raised her head and addressed the courtroom, saying she’d been held in a secret prison and that her children had been taken from her. “This is not a list of targets,” she said in reference to the documents. “I never was planning to bomb anything. You have to give me credit.” After that she was removed from the courtroom and did not return for the rest of the day.

Snyder recounted how he and his team were initially given the runaround by the Afghans and were told by the governor of Ghazni Province, Usman Usmani, that they could not take custody of Siddiqui as they had wanted to. The governor indicated that he had been personally called by President Karzai and told not to turn Siddiqui over. The U.S. team was instead given permission to question Siddiqui and to establish her identity. Snyder said that after the team was granted permission they were led to a room on the second floor of the police station. Upon entering he said there were a number of Afghans and that eventually most of the U.S. team came in. Snyder described how he sat against a wall with the curtain two seats to his right. The U.S. warrant officer was nearest to the curtain. Snyder indicated that the team was not aware that Siddiqui was behind the curtain and that he was speaking to one of the Afghan counterterrorism officials to explain the team’s intentions to question her. “I heard noise to my right,” he said. He described a female voice saying, “May the blood of something be on your head or hands.” He couldn’t recall exactly what the speaker said, but remembered that it was in English. “I was the only one seated with a good line of sight. I turned to the right. The curtain was opened wider. What I saw was a female sitting on the bed attempting to shoulder a rifle pointed at my head. I could see the barrel edges.” Snyder was still seated. “I looked at the individual holding the rifle and at that time I was certain there was nothing I could do to get out of the line of fire. It was at that point that she hesitated for a second. I figured she didn’t know all the components.” In that split second, Snyder says, he launched himself out of his chair and began to flee the room. Before he was out the door he heard several shots go off. He got out of the room but returned a few seconds later when he’d been able to unholster his 9 mm revolver. When he returned he saw the U.S. warrant officer standing over Siddiqui’s body. “He said he’d hit her. At that point she was on the bed fighting.”

Snyder then described how he and the warrant officer restrained Siddiqui and after she’d received medical aid they carried her down the stairs to a waiting vehicle and drove her to the U.S. forward operating base. Snyder said Siddiqui fought the soldiers even after she was shot. “She was very very resistant. She was pleading off and on for us to just kill her instead of detaining her. I said that’s not going to happen.”

Snyder said that after the shooting incident he did not see Siddiqui again. He said the U.S. warrant officer, whose M-4 Siddiqui allegedly took, appeared to believe he’d “saved the day” by shooting her. But Snyder said he disagreed and that he felt the warrant officer was partly to blame for the incident because he’d left his weapon unsecured. Snyder said that shortly after the incident he was approached by the warrant officer’s captain who wanted to write the warrant officer up for a Silver Star for valorous conduct in the incident. Snyder said he “wouldn’t support it.”

The next witness for the prosecution was John Threadcraft, an infantry captain in Ghazni at the time of the shooting. Threadcraft said his primary duty was to serve as a liaison with the National Security Forces (which include the Afghan National Police, the Afghan National Army, and the National Security Directorate, which serves as Afghanistan’s equivalent to the CIA). Threadcraft also said he’d developed a close working relationship with Governor Usmani, who called him on Jan. 17 and said, “I captured a female bombmaker.” Usmani brought Threadcraft a black handbag allegedly belonging to Siddiqui and turned the bag’s contents over to him, including a women’s clothing, a thumb drive, documents, and various jars of substances that looked like makeup. Threadcraft said he saw words written in English in the documents such as “dirty bomb,” “bioweapons,” and “Ebola.” Threadcraft then attempted to broker an agreement with the Afghans to turn Siddiqui over to the U.S., but despite having the governor’s support he was unable to gain custody of her. He was not part of the team that went to interview Siddiqui.

The third witness for the prosecution was FBI Special Agent John Jefferson, who was one of the agents sent to Ghazni shortly after Siddiqui was picked up. He and his partner, Special Agent Eric Negron, arrived in Ghazni by helicopter from Salerno, in the Khost Province on the morning of July 18. Like Snyder, he described the difficulties the team had in getting permission to take custody of Siddiqui. He was in the room when the shooting incident took place, but there were several differences in his version of events. Snyder had said the curtain behind which Siddiqui was located was partially open when he first came in, but Jefferson said it was closed to the wall. Jefferson also said that the warrant officer “pulled the curtain to his left,” and looked to the left and right, but apparently did not see Siddiqui. (Note: According to the diagrams shown to the jury earlier in the day, the dimensions of the room are approximately 12′ by 26′ and the area in which Siddiqui was located was approximately 12′ x 12′, and was empty except for two cots.) Jefferson said the warrant officer “didn’t walk back there.” Approximately two minutes later he said the shooting started. He looked to the left and saw his partner, Negron and the warrant officer standing over Siddiqui, and that the two were attempting to subdue her. “JJ I need cuffs,” Negron said to Jefferson. “We were on the ground with her and Eric was trying to apply some medical treatment.”

Tomorrow, Day 2, USA v. Siddiqui, will begin with the government’s continued direct examination of FBI Special Agent John Jefferson…



Petra Bartosiewicz


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[Abdullah-Khan]

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Petra Bartosiewicz is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her forthcoming book, “The Best Terrorists We Could Find,” an investigation of terrorism trials in the U.S. since 9/11, will be published by Nation Books in 2010. She has written for numerous publications, including The Nation, Mother Jones, The New York Times, Salon.com and Hustler, and has worked in radio for the weekly program, This American Life, where her 2005 piece, “The Arms Trader,” was a finalist for the Livingston Awards and Scripps Howard Awards, and another piece, “The Prosecutor,” won the 2009 Newswomen’s Club of New York Award. She got her start in journalism at The New York Observer and later attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. You can find her investigation of Aafia Siddiqui’s case in the November 2009 issue of Harper’s magazine (www.harpers.org) and at her website www.petrabart.com She can be reached at petrabart@petrabart.com.

USA vs Aafia Siddiqui - Day 2​

This week the long awaited trial of Aafia Siddiqui began in a federal courtroom in Manhattan. Her case has been one of the most baffling in the annals of post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions. Siddiqui, as regular readers of this website know, is a 37-year-old, MIT-educated neuroscientist, who lived in the U.S. for ten years before mysteriously vanishing from Karachi, her hometown, in 2003, along with her three children, two of whom are American born. For five years her whereabouts remained unknown, while rumors swirled that she was an Al Qaeda operative, and that she had married Ammar al Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and one of the five accused 9/11 plotters expected to face trial in the U.S. In July 2008 she was picked up in Ghazni, Afghanistan on suspicion of being a suicide bomber. The following day, as a team of U.S. soldiers and FBI agents arrived to question her at the police station where she was being held, she allegedly managed to get hold of an M-4 automatic rifle belonging to one of the soldiers, and, according to prosecutors, she opened fire. She hit no one but was herself hit in the abdomen by return fire. What is known is that the U.S. considered Siddiqui to be someone connected to a number of high level terrorism suspects. They say she went on the run and remained underground during her missing years. But human rights groups have long held that Siddiqui is no extremist and believe she was illegally detained and interrogated by Pakistani intelligence at the behest of the U.S. She now faces charges of attempted murder. Her trial is expected to last two weeks.

January 20, 2009 (DAY 2)

Testimony continued with the direct examination of FBI Special Agent John Jefferson. Jefferson, who was on the stand yesterday afternoon, continued to recount the scene of the shooting in Ghazni. He said that just after Siddiqui was shot, his partner Eric Negron called out to him for handcuffs. “There was a pool of blood on the right side,” he said. Jefferson assisted Negron in subduing Siddiqui and cuffed her hands and her ankles. Jefferson said a stretcher was brought up to the room (an account that differs from that of Captain Snyder, who testified yesterday that the stairs were too narrow and so he had personally carried Siddiqui down to the Humvee). Jefferson said that by the time he and the others got downstairs a tense scene had unfolded as approximately twenty armed Afghan National Police officers had assembled outside. Jefferson said he remembers seeing a rocket propelled grenade launcher pointed at his head.

Siddiqui was then transported to the forward operating base in Ghazni and put in a small triage unit. Jefferson recalled that shortly afterwards he saw two Afghan intelligence officers who had been in the room at the time of the shooting. They had with them “a document stating that they did not have anything to do with what just occurred,” and asked Jefferson and his partner to sign it to absolve them of any responsibility for the shooting. “We were like, we’re not allowed to sign anything,” said Jefferson.

At the Ghazni triage Siddiqui was given just enough medical attention “to sustain her,” and was then flown by Black Hawk helicopter to another forward operating base in Afghanistan known as “Organ-E,” where she underwent surgery. Jefferson and Negron were on the flight, along with the pilot and a crew chief who doubled as a medic. Afterwards Siddiqui was transported to Bagram Air Base, arriving at approximately 1 a.m. Jefferson brought with him brown paper bags containing the documents that Siddiqui was allegedly found with in Ghazni. The thumb drive, which had apparently gotten misplaced while in Ghazni was delivered to Bagram shortly after he arrived with Siddiqui.

On cross examination, defense attorney Linda Moreno asked if Jefferson had seen Siddiqui either touch or fire a weapon in Ghazni. He said no. She went over his statement to the FBI on July 21, 2008, just a few days after the shooting, where he said he heard four rounds fired in the room in Ghazni, but did not describe the nature of the rounds in his statement. On the previous day of testimony Jefferson had said he was certain that he heard two sets of shots that had each come from a different gun. Jefferson said that given his long experience with firearms, “there is no doubt in my mind that two rounds came from different weapons.”

The government’s next witness was Ahmad Gul, an Afghan translator present in the room in Ghazni. Gul, 27 years old, was born in Afghanistan and lived in Pakistan for a time before returning to his native country to work as a translator with the U.S Army. He speaks Dari, Farsi, Urdu, and English. Gul explained how translators are generally assigned to a specific person in a unit, mostly warrant officers and captains. In the summer of 2008, Gul “mostly went out with the chief warrant officer.” He was with the warrant officer’s team as they went into the room where Siddiqui was being held behind the curtain. Gul was positioned with the rest of the U.S. team and the other Afghans present to the right of the curtain. “I turned around and I hit the curtain with my left hand and I saw a female holding a gun pointed at the chief warrant officer and the ministry of interior representatives, and she shot the gun,” he said. “Right away I lunged towards her and I pushed her towards the wall.” Gul said he grabbed both the barrel and the stock of the gun and struggled to gain control of the weapon. “I was worried I’d get shot and at that time she shot again.” The second bullet, he said, went in the same direction as the first. The struggle continued, and “she pushed me back into the middle of the room,” he said. “The chief warrant officer was two meters behind me with his pistol shooting towards me while I was wrestling with the female detainee.” The warrant officer then shot Siddiqui, despite the fact that she was using Gul as a shield. “As soon as she was shot, right away I snatched her gun. The chief warrant officer pushed her towards the bed.”

The question of whether the warrant officer checked behind the curtain at some point before the shooting occurred was revisited on cross examination by Linda Moreno. Earlier Gul said the warrant officer did not look behind the curtain, but when asked the question by Moreno he said he didn’t know. Moreno showed him a statement he gave to the FBI less than a week after the shooting, which apparently contradicted the answer he had just given her, but he said he did not remember giving the statement and later said he did remember giving the statement but that he did not telling the agents what was written there. She asked if he had read and initialed every paragraph at the time he gave the statement and he said he had. Moreno also asked Gul to elaborate on help he’s received from the U.S. since the shooting. Gul said the U.S. sponsored his visa and his flight to the U.S. was paid for. He was given money for rent, food and transportation (“less than $4,000,” he said). She also asked about his contact with the warrant officer since the shooting, which includes emails and phone calls. Gul said he considered the officer a “brother and a friend.”

The government then introduced a series of forensic experts, FBI Special Agent Dale Hutson, who photographed the materials allegedly seized with Siddiqui in Ghazni. He also fingerprinted Siddiqui when she was at Bagram Air Base. Hutson said the M-4 rifle which Siddiqui allegedly fired was not among the materials he catalogued, but arrived some days later. FBI Special Agent Todd Schmitt told jurors he transported the materials from Bagram to Washington DC in his backpack, which he kept with him at all times during the flight. He did not bring the rifle back with him. Special Agent Shelly Sine took fingerprint impressions from Siddiqui in New York in August 2008, shortly after she was flown in from Ghazni.

The day’s final witness, D.J. Fife, is a physical scientist and forensic examiner with the FBI. Fife was tasked with obtaining latent prints from the documents and other materials brought in from Ghazni, including the rifle, which was eventually flown to FBI headquarters in Quantico, VA. Fife described the various processes by which latent prints can be obtained and how a multitude of factors affect the ability to get a usable print. He told jurors that of 106 pages of documents he received from Ghazni, 33 pages had some kinds of fingerprints of value. He also described examining the rifle but said that he was unable to get any usable latent prints from it. Fife described the process, which includes exposing the surface to Superglue vapors that bind to any moisture on the surface and can sometimes reveal latent prints. He found no prints on the rifle. Fife said that it was not unusual for a gun to yield no usable prints, because any fingerprints on non-porous surfaces (like metal) can easily be smudged or wiped off, even by casual contact. He also said the rifle’s surfaces are not smooth but “stibbled” to provide for easy grip, and that these types of surfaces do not yield good prints.

Cross examination of Fife’s begins Jan 21, DAY 3, USA v. Siddiqui.



Petra Bartosiewicz



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[Abdullah-Khan]

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Petra Bartosiewicz is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her forthcoming book, “The Best Terrorists We Could Find,” an investigation of terrorism trials in the U.S. since 9/11, will be published by Nation Books in 2010. She has written for numerous publications, including The Nation, Mother Jones, The New York Times, Salon.com and Hustler, and has worked in radio for the weekly program, This American Life, where her 2005 piece, “The Arms Trader,” was a finalist for the Livingston Awards and Scripps Howard Awards, and another piece, “The Prosecutor,” won the 2009 Newswomen’s Club of New York Award. She got her start in journalism at The New York Observer and later attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. You can find her investigation of Aafia Siddiqui’s case in the November 2009 issue of Harper’s magazine (www.harpers.org) and at her website www.petrabart.com She can be reached at petrabart@petrabart.com.

USA vs Aafia Siddiqui - Day 3​

This week the long awaited trial of Aafia Siddiqui began in a federal courtroom in Manhattan. Her case has been one of the most baffling in the annals of post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions. Siddiqui, as regular readers of this website know, is a 37-year-old, MIT-educated neuroscientist, who lived in the U.S. for ten years before mysteriously vanishing from Karachi, her hometown, in 2003, along with her three children, two of whom are American born. For five years her whereabouts remained unknown, while rumors swirled that she was an Al Qaeda operative, and that she had married Ammar al Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and one of the five accused 9/11 plotters expected to face trial in the U.S. In July 2008 she was picked up in Ghazni, Afghanistan on suspicion of being a suicide bomber. The following day, as a team of U.S. soldiers and FBI agents arrived to question her at the police station where she was being held, she allegedly managed to get hold of an M-4 automatic rifle belonging to one of the soldiers, and, according to prosecutors, she opened fire. She hit no one but was herself hit in the abdomen by return fire. What is known is that the U.S. considered Siddiqui to be someone connected to a number of high level terrorism suspects. They say she went on the run and remained underground during her missing years. But human rights groups have long held that Siddiqui is no extremist and believe she was illegally detained and interrogated by Pakistani intelligence at the behest of the U.S. She now faces charges of attempted murder. Her trial is expected to last two weeks.

January 21, 2009 (DAY 3)

Government prosecutors continued to present their case today, shifting their focus from the testimony of eyewitnesses to the Ghazni shooting, to how evidence at the scene was secured. The day’s testimony was dominated by FBI Special Agent Gordon Hurley, who made three trips to Ghazni in July, August and October 2008 to secure evidence at the scene of the shooting and interview U.S. and Afghan witnesses. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna Dabbs showed jurors numerous photographs and a video of the room on the second floor of the Afghan police station where the shooting took place, and a photo of the cell where Siddiqui was held when she was first brought to the station on July 17. Hurley’s first trip was relatively short, but he said he took statements from witnesses at the scene, including Captain Snyder and his translator Ahmad Gul (both of whom gave testimony on day one of this trial), Staff Sergeant Lamont Williams, FBI Special Agents Eric Negron and John Jefferson, and the chief warrant officer. He did not conduct interviews with any Afghans during that first visit. While in Ghazni in July, Hurley also made a preliminary investigation of the room where the shooting took place. He said that on this visit U.S. Army Captain John Kendall gave him custody of both the M-4 automatic rifle that prosecutors say Siddiqui used to fire at the U.S. team and the 9 mm revolver that the chief warrant officer used to shoot her. The jurors were invited to handle both weapons as they were passed around the jury box. Hurley estimated the M-4 weighed 7.5 pounds and possibly as much as 9 pounds with the various scopes that had been attached to it at the time of the shooting. He said he left the three sighting scopes with the army after Kendall told him they did not have replacement devices and needed them for their ongoing combat operations.

Hurley returned to Ghazni again in August 2008 to conduct further interviews with witnesses, including Afghan military, civilian and police officials, as well as U.S. soldiers. He wanted to establish an evidentiary “chain of custody” for the evidence seized at the time of the shooting, which included not just the weapons but also the documents and other materials Siddiqui was allegedly arrested with. Hurley estimated he and his partner interviewed as many as 30 individuals. He was looking for any additional eyewitnesses and for friends or relatives of Siddiqui. He went to the local bazaar in Ghazni and interviewed shopkeepers there. On Aug 25 during this trip he also returned to the Ghazni police compound to do a more thorough investigation of the crime scene, where he made a more extensive examination of the room, including the area where bullets from the gun Siddiqui allegedly fired were thought to be lodged. Despite several probes, including removing a chunk of the wall itself, they were unable to locate any bullets from the area. Hurley inspected the back area where Siddiqui was standing just before the shooting and found a “projectile,” or portion of a bullet there.

On cross examination, defense attorney Dawn Cardi questioned why Hurley did not return to Ghazni sooner after his first visit to continue his investigation and in order, for example, to retrieve evidence like the curtain that divided the room. Hurley said it wasn’t easy to move around Afghanistan and that he hadn’t tasked anyone with retrieving the curtain because there was “no one to call.” He said that he and his partner returned as soon as they could get permission but that they didn’t ask for any special dispensation to get there faster. Cardi also questioned Hurley about the inconsistencies in the various statements of the witnesses and why he didn’t do more to resolve them. “Eyewitnesses see things very differently,” said Hurley. “You don’t want to force people to make their statements match.” He rejected the suggestion that he had not been skeptical enough in receiving the accounts from the U.S. personnel he interviewed. “We’re supposed to be skeptics,” he said.

One of the major discrepancies in the testimony so far has been the question of whether the warrant officer looked behind the curtain before the shooting. Hurley recalled that FBI Special Agent John Jefferson said the chief warrant officer had checked behind the curtain just before the shooting and given the “all clear.” FBI Special Agent Eric Negron, he said, told him that he recalled the warrant officer “glanced behind the curtain and saw no one was there.” But Hurley could not remember what the other witnesses he interviewed said. He also said he didn’t recall speaking with FBI agents about a letter the Afghan intelligence officials supposedly asked them to sign to absolve them of responsibility for the shooting (see day 2 testimony from Special Agent John Jefferson).

Hurley later said that securing the evidence at the scene was a relatively low priority for the U.S. military in Ghazni Province at the time. “They were doing other stuff, right?” asked Dabbs. “Fighting a war,” said Hurley.

Although attendance at the trial dropped sharply after the first day, security has increasingly tightened as the trial has progressed. A metal detector was installed outside the courtroom door on the second day to screen all individuals sitting in the public gallery. Jurors were told not to make any adverse inferences from the added security. Today jurors were also required to pass through the metal detector and security guards made detailed searches of all bags brought into the courtroom. Members of the general public for the past two days have also been required to show photo identifications and court security guards have noted the name and address of each individual. At the conclusion of today’s proceedings, defense attorney Charles Swift made note of the identification requirement and said that it is not in keeping with Siddiqui’s right to a free and open trial. The judge said he would look into it, though attendees at the trial said a member of the court security detail told them the measures were on the direct order of the judge.

Tomorrow Jan 22, DAY 4, USA v. Siddiqui.



Petra Bartosiewicz



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