Dr. Afia Siddiqui incarcerated for 86 years by US court
24 September, 2010
NEW YORK: A US federal court on Thursday sentenced Dr Aafia Siddiqui to 86 years in prison for the attempted murder of US officers in Afghanistan, in a high-profile case closely watched in Islamabad.
Aafia Siddiqui, 38, a neuroscientist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was found guilty by a jury in February for allegedly trying to kill American servicemen in Afghanistan.
“It is my judgment that Dr Siddiqui is sentenced to a period of incarceration of 86 years,” judge Richard Berman told Thursday’s hearing. As the sentence was read out, a woman among about a dozen Siddiqui supporters in court yelled: “Shame, shame on this court!”
But Dr Aafia repeatedly pleaded with Muslims to take her sentencing calmly. “Forgive everybody in my case, please.... And also forgive Judge Berman,” she said, as her legal team said an appeal would be lodged.
“The important part is that an appeal go forward and that those errors be addressed, because there were a lot of errors in this case,” attorney Charles Swift told journalists after the hearing.
Dr Aafia, a mother of three, was found guilty by the US court of grabbing a rifle at an Afghan police station in the town of Ghazni where she was being interrogated in July 2008 and trying to gun down a group of US servicemen.
Prosecutors said she had picked up the rifle and opened fire on US servicemen and FBI representatives trying to take her into detention. She missed and in a struggle was herself shot by one of the US soldiers.
Defence lawyers argued there was no physical evidence, such as finger prints or gunpowder traces, to show Dr Aafia even grabbed the rifle. Dr Aafia, her face wrapped in an ivory-white shawl, denied shooting at US officers and said in rambling court commentaries that she had been held in secret prisons for years and tortured at the Bagram US military base near Kabul, where she was “brainwashed.”
A frail-looking woman who excelled in her US studies, Siddiqui featured on a 2004 US list of people suspected of al-Qaeda links. Her case had already attracted the attention of human rights groups after she disappeared for five years. And protests erupted in Pakistan in February when she was found guilty by the New York court.
Family members and some human rights groups said Dr Aafia was imprisoned by US forces after disappearing along with her three children in Pakistan in 2003 and that she is now mentally disturbed.
Her lawyers tried to prove Dr Aafia, who reported disturbing hallucinations involving her missing children, was insane. However, a judge ruled her fit to stand trial. Although she was not charged with terrorism, prosecutors described her as a would-be terrorist who had also plotted to bomb New York. And the trial failed to shed light on the mystery of what had happened to the petite, academically brilliant mother of three.
Human rights groups have long speculated she may have been secretly imprisoned and tortured at the US base in Bagram, Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui vanished in Pakistan at a time of intense efforts by US-backed local security forces to root out al-Qaeda. And relatives believe she may have been grabbed in one of the operations. But the US military has denied she was ever held at the base.
Our correspondent adds: Dr Aafia Siddiqui was handed a total of 86 years of prison term on seven separate counts. According to initial details she was handed down 20-year terms each on three counts while the other counts carried lesser sentences. With these sentences set to run concurrently her sentence would effectively mean a 20-year incarceration period.
APP adds from Islamabad: The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has cancelled his US visit to record his protest against the US court decision to sentence Dr Aafia to 86 years imprisonment.
While strongly condemning the US court’s verdict, the JUI-F chief termed it an attack on Pakistani nation. He said the US court by making such a decision has proved itself to be an institution of cruelty.
Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in a statement condemned the US court’s verdict and termed it a crime against humanity. He said this decision has very much disappointed Pakistani nation. He said that Pakistan should not keep quite and play its role for the cancellation of this brutal punishment.
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain has also criticised Dr Aafia’s sentence and demanded of the US government to withdraw the sentence.
Minister of State for Communications Chaudhry Imtiaz Safdar Warraich said that Pakistan would continue extending legal assistance to Dr Aafia.
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