USA v Aafia Siddiqui

Cageprisoners Inside the Courtroom Coverage

by Petra Bartosiewicz

Last week the long awaited trial of Aafia Siddiqui began in a federal courtroom in Manhattan. Her case has been one of the most baffling in the annals of post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions. Siddiqui, as regular readers of this website know, is a 37-year-old, MIT-educated neuroscientist, who lived in the U.S. for ten years before mysteriously vanishing from Karachi, her hometown, in 2003, along with her three children, two of whom are American born. For five years her whereabouts remained unknown, while rumors swirled that she was an Al Qaeda operative, and that she had married Ammar al Baluchi, the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and one of the five accused 9/11 plotters expected to face trial in the U.S. In July 2008 she was picked up in Ghazni, Afghanistan on suspicion of being a suicide bomber. The following day, as a team of U.S. soldiers and FBI agents arrived to question her at the police station where she was being held, she allegedly managed to get hold of an M-4 automatic rifle belonging to one of the soldiers, and, according to prosecutors, she opened fire. She hit no one but was herself hit in the abdomen by return fire. What is known is that the U.S. considered Siddiqui to be someone connected to a number of high level terrorism suspects. They say she went on the run and remained underground during her missing years. But human rights groups have long held that Siddiqui is no extremist and believe she was illegally detained and interrogated by Pakistani intelligence at the behest of the U.S. She now faces charges of attempted murder. Her case is expected to go the jury for deliberation next week.

January 28, 2009 (DAY

After days of vowing to boycott her own trial, Siddiqui voluntarily took the stand today and testified in her own defense. Her testimony came over the strenuous objections of her attorneys, who filed an application with Judge Richard Berman asking that he block her from taking the witness stand due to what they say is her mental instability and “diminished capacity.” One of the primary concerns was that Siddiqui’s rambling answers would give the government an opportunity to introduce incriminating statements she allegedly made to FBI agents while recuperating from gunshot wounds incurred in Ghazni. Prosecutors, meanwhile, urged the judge to permit Siddiqui to exercise her Fifth Amendment right to testify. On the witness stand Siddiqui was lucid and, for the most part, kept to the case at hand, though the judge frequently cut her answers short when she strayed. She appeared eager to tell her story and was at times in good humor, and even giggled at some of the questions she was asked.

Although Siddiqui’s testimony was the central focus of the day, defense attorneys also played a brief video snippet from a press conference that took place at the Afghan National Police station, in the same room where the shooting Siddiqui is charged with occurred. The video pans across the room and shows a section of the wall where two marks are clearly visible. One of the centerpieces of the prosecution’s case has been that these marks are bullet holes from the M-4 rifle that Siddiqui allegedly fired. But the video, which shows the marks on the wall, was taken on the morning of July 18, 2008, several hours before the shooting. (The marks in the video were reportedly brought to the attention of the defense on Thursday morning by prosecutor David Rody, who had himself only noticed them the night before.) The clip was played today without comment and it’s unclear if jurors understood why they were watching it, but defense attorneys are expected to assert in their closing arguments that it proves the holes could not have been the result of bullets shot by Siddiqui.

Siddiqui testified twice during the day, though only once before the jury. Prior to her direct testimony, she spoke at a preliminary hearing intended to decide whether or not she would be permitted to take the stand during trial. Also at issue during the hearing was whether prosecutors could use statements she made to FBI agents while she was in custody at Bagram Air Base following her arrest in Ghazni. Her defense attorneys argued any such statements would have been while she was in a drug-induced post-operative haze and before she was formally arrested and read her rights. At the hearing the government called two FBI agents, Angela Serser and Bruce Kamerman, who testified they interviewed Siddiqui over a two-week period while she was at Bagram, and who both said Siddiqui spoke willingly, and even solicited conversations with them when they were in her hospital room. Kamerman said Siddiqui “was coherent, she was lucid and she was able to engage in conversation.” Serser, who spent the most time with Siddiqui, described how she sat at her bedside for as many as twelve hours a day. “We discussed Ms. Siddiqui’s background, her religious beliefs and some of the circumstances for the case being opened in the U.S.,” said Serser. The purpose of the interviews, said Serser, was to gather intelligence, not to discuss the shooting incident in Ghazni, which had already been assigned to a separate team of agents. But according to Serser, they did talk about the documents that Siddiqui was allegedly found with in Ghazni. Prosecutors have introduced those documents to show Siddiqui’s motives in the shooting incident (the documents include references to specific “cells,” and a “mass casualty attack,” and name landmarks like the Empire State Building). “She indicated she enjoyed our discussions,” said Serser.

Defense attorney Charles Swift questioned how voluntary Siddiqui’s statements were given that she was held in four-point restraints and dependent on the agent. “If she wanted food she had to ask you,” said Swift.

“Correct,” said Serser.

“If she wanted water she had to ask you,” said Swift.

“Correct,” said Serser.

“If she wanted to go to the bathroom she had to ask you,” said Swift.

“Correct,” said Serser.

During a break in the proceedings, Siddiqui was heard telling one of her attorneys, “It was just a conversation. I didn’t know. She seemed like a nice person.” Siddiqui later took the stand and said that during her time at the hospital in Bagram she was on a cocktail of medications that included Percoset and morphine. She said she felt dizzy all the time. She described feeling helpless in the restraints and said she was unable to bring her hand to her mouth to feed herself. She said that with one exception none of the FBI agents or hospital staff identified themselves and they covered their name tags when they were in her hospital room. She said that she had been well cared for by the medical staff and had nothing negative to say about Serser, but that she had asked that Kamerman not be permitted in her room because he stared at her while her wounds were being dressed and when she went to the bathroom, which she found “very immodest.” She said she felt intimidated and was told “if you don’t talk to us it’s a transfer to the bad guys. I had been with a group of bad guys and I didn’t want to go back.” She was asked about the statements she made to the agents. “I thought it was an exercise to retain false information in my head,” she said. “I thought it was a continuation of my history in a secret prison.” During questioning at the preliminary hearing, Siddiqui was asked about her three children, Ahmad, Mariam and Suleiman. Ahmad was found with Siddiqui in Ghazni, but Mariam and Suleiman remain missing. Kamerman testified that she had told him alternately that the children were dead and that they were with her sister. Siddiqui said she told Kamerman no such thing and that she had no idea where the children are.

Judge Richard Berman ruled that Siddiqui could testify. “I have erred on the side of her full participation,” said Berman, who has throughout the trial required Siddiqui be present in the courthouse even if she chooses not to be in the courtroom during proceedings. He also ruled that her statements to the FBI in Bagram were “voluntary and knowing,” and could thus be used to impeach her testimony before the jury. As testimony resumed with the jury present, Siddiqui took the stand, wearing the same tan outfit and canvas sneakers she has worn throughout the trial. She wore a cream colored hijab on her head that covered all but her eyes. On direct examination by defense attorney Elaine Sharpe, she talked about her childhood and her education at MIT and Brandeis Universities. She said she was born in Karachi but spent much of her childhood in Zambia, where her father worked as a physician. She said she came from a family of doctors and that she’d been academically inclined towards the social sciences but that she’d studied science due to family pressure. She received a doctorate in neuroscience and said her doctoral thesis dealt with how children learn.

When the questions turned to the events in Ghazni, Siddiqui was initially reluctant to continue, saying that speaking about the accusations against her would violate her vow to boycott the trial. “That will mean I’m participating in something I don’t morally agree with,” she said. She eventually did recount the events of that day, telling jurors that when the U.S. team arrived to interview her she was in the room on the second floor of the Afghan National Police headquarters. The room, which has been sketched countless times for jurors over the past week, was divided by a gold curtain. On one side of the curtain was Siddiqui, who had initially been bound by the Afghans after an escape attempt, but who was untied by the time the U.S team arrived. On the other side of the curtain was a group of Afghans soldiers, police and Ministry of Interior officials who had arrived that morning from Kabul. Siddiqui said she heard American voices talking but did not see who was in the room. “I understood they wanted to take me away,” she said. “I didn’t want to go back to the secret prison. I wanted to get out.” She said she went to peek through the curtain to see if she could slip past the people in the room and make an escape. “The next thing I knew somebody saw me and said something and shot me and then another shot me and then I just passed out,” she said. When she regained consciousness she heard one of the members of the U.S. team say, “We’re taking this bitch with us.”

Asked by Sharpe whether she had picked up the M-4, Siddiqui said, “This is the biggest joke. I’ve been forced to smile under my scarf sometimes. Of course not.”

On cross examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna Dabbs asked Siddiqui about a number of the documents she was allegedly found with in Ghazni at the time of her arrest. “I didn’t check my bags. I didn’t prepare them,” said Siddiqui. She said that some of the materials had been “copied from a magazine in the secret prison. I didn’t write this stuff.” The prosecution posted a number of the documents on an overhead projector in the courtroom earlier in the trial, but the writing was not legible from the spectator gallery. The judge has sealed the documents with a protective order that prevents them from being made public, saying that certain parts should not be disseminated because they contain chemical formulas. So far only fragments of the text have been revealed in various court documents filed by prosecutors. During cross examination Siddiqui asked that one of the documents which depicted sketches of guns be taken off the overhead projector, saying that she had not authored it. “You can’t build a case on hate, you should build it on fact,” she told Dabbs.

At one point during the cross examination, Dabbs asked Siddiqui whether she told FBI agents in Bagram that she had been in hiding. Defense attorneys immediately called for a mistrial, saying that information about where Siddiqui was during her five missing years is classified. The judge denied the request. Dabbs asked whether Siddiqui knew she’d been wanted for questioning by the FBI and brought up a 2002 interview that the FBI conducted with Siddiqui and her then husband Amjad Khan. She asked why Siddiqui left the U.S. for Pakistan shortly after the meeting with the agents. Siddiqui said the trip to Pakistan was pre-planned and insisted that her ex-husband, not she, was the focus of the interview. Later Sharp asked whether Siddiqui was prevented from leaving the country. “No, I wasn’t in trouble,” said Siddiqui.

“No one ever tried to stop you from leaving?” asked Sharpe.

“No,” said Siddiqui.

The trial continues Friday, Jan 29, with Day 9, USA v Siddiqui.

Petra Bartosiewicz is a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including The Nation, Mother Jones, and Salon.com. Her forthcoming book on terrorism trials in the U.S., The Best Terrorists We Could Find, will be published by Nation Books early next year. You can find her investigation of Aafia Siddiqui’s case, “The Intelligence Factory: How America Makes its Enemies Disappear,” in the November 2009 issue of Harper’s magazine (www.harpers.org) and at her website www.petrabart.com. She can be reached at petrabart@petrabart.com.

(taken from cageprisoners.com)