Jury selection in the “Lady Al Qaeda” trial got off to a bizarre start Wednesday with the accused terrorist telling jurors she was “boycotting” – and demanding Jews be excluded from the panel.
“If they have a Zionist or Israeli background…they are all mad at me,” said Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained neuroscientist charged with attempted murder.
“I have a feeling everyone here is them – subject to genetic testing….They should be excluded if you want to be fair,” she told Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Berman.
Prospective jurors weren’t present for that outburst, but they were in the courtroom to hear her say, “I’m boycotting the trial…there are too many injustices.”
At another point, Siddiqui repeatedly refused to talk to her own lawyers, saying she didn’t trust them.
“I don’t trust you either,” she told Berman.
She even tried to toss a handwritten note to prosecutors requesting time each day to pray. Berman ruled she could leave the courtroom at 3:30 p.m. for 15minutes of prayer.
Siddiqui, 37, is accused of picking up an M-4 Army rifle and firing two rounds at a team of Americans who tried to question her in Afghanistan on July 18, 2008.
Prosecutors argue she screamed, “Allah Akbar” and vowed to kill Americans before she was wrestled to the ground. She allegedly had two pounds of poisonous sodium cyanide and hundreds of pages of notes and documents on how to build chemical and biological weapons.
The terror guides featured targets including the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, prosecutors said.
Berman ruled the jury can hear about the target list and other handwritten notes but tossed as evidence the chemicals and mass-produced documents from “how-to” terror manuals.
Prosecutors also are barred from bringing up Siddiqui’s alleged ties or sympathies with Al Qaeda because they would create a bias.
(Source: NY Daily News)
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6 Responses
It’s definitely true that Jews and Israelis wouldn’t be impartial to her. Neither would a Muslim be, for that matter. Check their genes.
1. Dumb on her part, Jews tend to be more likely than non-Jews to stick to the facts. Her case is important in her country (Pakistan) since her family said she was kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence, and the incident occured while she was trying to escape (the Pakistanis say she had run off to become a terrorist, even though she is a western educated academic).
2. It seems to be dubious to charge her with shooting a soldier overseas (she being an alien, charged with doing someing illegal in a foreign country). That should be left to an Afghan court. She isn’t being charged with planning a terrorist attack, nor with being an unlawful combattant. Since her being a would-be terrorist, or terrorist planner, isn’t an issue in the case, she might get an aquittal if she can argue that she believed she was being held unlawfully and threatened. They should have charged her with a terrorism-related offense, or left her in Afghanistan and et her deal with the Afghani (or Pakistani) courts which could charge her with treason.
She’s vowed to kill Americans. Perhaps we should exclude all Americans from the jury pool, as they wouldn’t be impartial.
Neither would any sane, normal person.
akuperma, are you or are you not in favor of her getting convicted? Do you want her getting back to Afghanistan or Pakistan so that this time she may kill Americans? Your logic is loopy.
She should be locked up for ever! You can tell she’s a wack job and will never change