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A classic case of all parties involved pitching their version of the story. Out of all this what seems accurate or believable? The woman arrested is from Pakistan. She was educated at MIT and Brandeis as a neuroscientist and has a son. She and her son are accused of plotting a terrorist attack. She and/or her son possessed enough evidence on them to convince a US Court to go ahead with the case.

After disappearing the woman surfaced in Pakistan and was arrested. While being held in Pakistan one person arriving at her location left an M14 ‘on the floor’ and she retrieved the weapon and from behind curtains opened fire. She missed but a soldier returned fire hitting her in the abdomen. After surgery, etc., she was brought to the US, is in jail and refusing to appear in Court. Her defense team claims it is because of physical and mental difficulties.

The two odd things noticed while reviewing this story were an apparent typo in a WaPo account that described the soldier’s weapon as an M-4 assumed to be an M-14. To Siddiqui’s attorney: how believable was it that a soldier left a weapon on the floor and that a mere 90 pound woman could pick it up? The sole commentary from this blog on the story reads like this, ‘Hey defense attorney lady, any chance you had to convince me of your client’s innocence disappeared with your ridiculous comments in the press just paraphrased here’.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

Below, Al Jazeera chimes in with this video……..

and here is a report on the story from Voice of America

Wisniewski report - Download (MP3)
Wisniewski report - Listen (MP3)

A Pakistani woman who is charged with trying to murder U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan refused to appear for her arraignment in New York City Thursday. Defense lawyers say Aafia Siddiqui is unable or unwilling to submit to a required strip-search due to wounds she suffered when she was arrested nearly two months ago and that she urgently needs medical and psychological care. VOA’s Walter Wisniewski has more.

Aafia Siddiqui

Aafia Siddiqui was absent when prosecutors and defense attorneys gathered in federal court on Thursday. The defense team says the 36-year-old, U.S.-educated scientist is in extremely poor mental and physical health. The lawyers want the court to transfer her from a federal detention center to a hospital, to determine whether she is able to stand trial.

“I believe that she has severe emotional, psychological and medical issues, [and] that human rights require that she be taken out of the Bureau of Prisons and transferred to Bellevue [Hospital], so that she can be evaluated,” said Elizabeth Fink, Siddiqui’s lead defense attorney.

Siddiqui came to the United States as a teenager. She trained as a neuroscientist at two prestigious American universities, married and had three children, then returned to Pakistan in 2002. A year later, she dropped out of sight and was not heard from again until her arrest in mid-July in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province.

The police who arrested Siddiqui called in U.S. soldiers and FBI agents to interrogate the woman the following day. They say their prisoner somehow took a rifle from one of the Americans and opened fire. She missed, but one of the soldiers shot Siddiqui in the abdomen.

After emergency surgery, she was held in Afghanistan for several weeks, then returned to the U.S. and charged with attempted murder and other offenses. Her indictment, which was unsealed earlier this week, links her to unspecified terrorist groups and that, through handwritten notes and computer files, she discussed the feasibility of attacks on U.S. targets — including New York’s landmark Empire State Building.

No one will speak on the record, but the implication is that Siddiqui was a suicide-bomber-in-training, and that she was under the control of terrorists during the nearly five years in which she dropped out of sight.

Defense attorney Elizabeth Fink

Siddiqui’s lawyers tell a markedly different story. They suggest that Siddiqui originally was detained by what attorney Elizabeth Fink calls “the American dark side”. The defense lawyer scoffs at the indictment’s citation of the suspicious documents, and notes that no charges of terrorist activity have been brought against her client. “She’s not being charged with possessing any of those documents. Why was that put there? It was put there so that everybody can think that she’s ‘al-Qaida mom.’”

Although Fink and her colleagues have not seen Siddiqui since August 11, they say she has been left “incredibly damaged” by the events of the past two months. They are seeking psychological tests to determine whether Siddiqui is competent to stand trial. They say the strip-search required at the detention center where Siddiqui is being held is excruciatingly painful because of the severity of her wounds.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman ordered prosecutors and defense lawyers to try to agree on arrangements for Siddiqui to appear in court in Manhattan, possibly by a videolink from her cell in Brooklyn. Both sides are due to appear in court again on September 22.

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Dollar Traveler, Shadowscope, , The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, NN&V, Democrat=Socialist, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, DragonLady’s World, Walls of the City, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Terrorism, wordpress, News Media, disclosure, ethics, Afghanistan, Pakistan, United States, Law, Justice, Opinion, Foreign Affairs, Muslim, Military, Fugitive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.