Pakistani scientist's 86-Year prison sentence raises questions re.America justice

Carol Forsloff - On a few media back pages  there is mention of Dr.
Aafia Siddiqui's sentence of 86 years in prison by an American federal
judge, something that could be a serious blow to Pakistani - U.S.
relations.

U.S. Federal District Judge Richard M. Berman sentenced 38-year-old
Pakistani neuroscientist Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to 86 years in prison for
trying to kill U.S. soldiers and federal agents while in custody in
Afghanistan two years ago.

The response from this sentencing has been outrage in many areas of the
world while it has been met with approval from federal prosecutors.

What a former U.S. military veteran of Vietnam, Gordie Hayuk, declares
brings a "quiet anger" may cause a rift in support of America's aims in
Pakistan.

The elements of the case have been put together in small bits in the
United States, and what might be particularly disturbing is the Veterans
Today documentation of the sentence that is no longer available online
and was just a few days ago.  This raises questions about the potential
muzzling of the story, sublimated to only a few lines and not part of
front page news in the United States despite the problems it may raise
for U.S. - Pakistani relations.

The documentation provided an overview of U.S. military concerns about
an 86-year sentence given by a civilian judge in the harshest manner,
according to the originally linked to an email account received by Green
Heritage News.  But this account has disappeared, although the sentence
given of 86 years remains a serious concern among those few members of
the media in the United States, foreign correspondents, diplomats and
Pakistani officials as well as ordinary citizens who know about it.

Veterans
Today does
provide an overview of the trial that took place in February 2010 and
objections raised to how the evidence was presented against Aafia at the
time.

In
an article entitled "The Truth About U.S. Justice," the author, Yvonne
Ridley, wrote, "Many of us are still in a state of shock over the guilty
verdict returned on Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

The response from the people of Pakistan was predictable and overwhelming and I salute their spontaneous actions.

From Peshawar to Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and beyond they marched in their thousands demanding the return of Aafia."

Ridley
provides the details of the case as these:  Aafia was accused of firing
on soldiers from a prison cell, two rounds of bullets before she was
subdued.  Yet the bullets hit no one and there was no residue from
them.  Observers at the trial wondered how jury members ignored the
science that revealed there was no evidence that linked Aafia to the gun
or the bullets.  In other words, the physical evidence was not produced
that showed anything to support guilt.

What
is part of the account, and Ridley points out most disconcerting, is
that Aafia had been searching for her children, and the author objects
to the jury's ignorance of what might really have happened to Aafia and
her family.  Ridley writes, "The jury couldn’t handle the truth. Because
that would have meant that the defendant really had been kidnapped,
abused, tortured and held in dark, secret prisons by the US before being
shot and put on a rendition flight to New York. It would have meant
that her three children – two of them US citizens – would also have been
kidnapped, abused and tortured by the US."

But
the government refuted all this at the trial and sentencing, observing
Aafia was a scientist in league with Al-Qaida, planning to bomb American
targets, and that she had been shot in the prison cell in order to
subdue her after she took an unattended rifle, shot and missed killing
American soldiers and others around her at the time.

According
to court documents and summaries, Judge Berman,
accused of rendering a harsh sentence, said at the time  Siddiqui had
declared she was a victim of Zionist conspiracies and wanted members of
the jury to have genetic testing.  She also followed up with a
statement, "I am not against Israelis or any people, certainly not the
Jewish people."  Defense attorneys defended what was presented as
terrorist threatening as irrational behavior evidencing mental illness.
She also was reported to have had confrontations with her defense
attorneys over any potential negotiations for a lighter sentence.

Pakistani
citizens were reportedly outraged when the jury at trial found Dr. Aafia guilty of
what was considered to be trumped up charges by many in the Muslim
world.

The
media, however, has not shone the harsh light on the case, as Veterans
Today pointed out in the article now removed from the site.  It is left
to the bits and pieces that can still be found after the Internet
scrubbing for citizens to wonder about international justice in the
United States, what the truth is about the case itself and how it might
further impact Arab - American relations.

Judge
Berman declared Dr. Aafia Siddiqui sane, but she has been sentenced to
serve those 86 years at FMC Carswell, which is a federal prison for the

criminally insane in Texas.