The woman dubbed “Lady Al Qaeda” was convicted Wednesday of attempted murder for shooting at Americans in Afghanistan – and she reacted in typical fashion.
“This is a verdict coming from Israel not America,” Aafia Siddiqui exclaimed, raising one hand and pointing up before being led out of the Manhattan courtroom.
“That’s where the anger belongs. I can testify to this. And I have proof.”
The outburst was hardly shocking; Siddiqui disrupted her own trial several times with bizarre statement and demands to take the stand in her own defense.
Despite her insistence she never grabbed an Army rifle and opened fire on her U.S. interrogators, a federal jury found her guilty of attempted murder and six other counts.
The 37-year-old MIT-trained neuroscientist faces life in prison when she’s sentenced May 6. “Juries do make mistakes. Juries do go wrong” said Elaine Sharp, one of Siddiqui’s lawyers.
“In my opinion this verdict is based on fear, not on fact.”
Sharp said when she told Siddiqui the verdict, she asked that a message be sent to her supporters at home in Pakistan that she did not want any violent demonstrations.
The lawyer claimed Siddiqui’s anti-Israeli comments were the paranoid rantings of a women who had been held in solitary confinement for 18 months.
Siddiqui was arrested in 2008 in Afghanistan after being caught with poisonous chemicals, bomb-making instructions and a list of New York landmarks.
She grabbed an unguarded rifle at an Afghan police station and started shooting at the Americans sent to grill her.
She was not charged with terrorism.
(Source: NY Daily News)
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2 Responses
So much for the theory that they can’t do terrorist trials in New York.
From a legal perspective, the trick is to charge them with a specific crime, and not try to turn the case into a show trial. It should be noted the evidence was a bit weak (the prosecution case was based on believing that experienced military personnel left a rifle unguarded where a prisoner could grab it, and the prosecution was helped by the fact the woman appears to be mildly “nuts”).
There you go with your historical revisionism again and trying to play both sides of an issue akuperma. Now, which one are you; Eric Holder, hannah Rosenthal, Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, et. al.