By Yvonne Ridley
Throughout her trial in New York Dr. Aafia Siddiqui tried in vain to sack her legal team as is the right of any defendant in any court in the world today.
Her suspicions they were not working in her best interests were almost certainly confirmed when she was found guilty of attempted murder and given an 86-year-sentence.
Had she represented herself it is hard to imagine she could have received a more severe conviction and sentencing.
But I can reveal she is still not free of those who represented her -- despite sending a handwritten letter to the court earlier this month to fire her lawyers her request has again been refused.
And even though she has nominated a new lawyer she trusts to represent her, this request has also been turned down and that lawyer is now barred from even attempting to make contact with her until the old team is fired.
It's a frustrating Catch 22 in which yet again the U.S. judicial system ignores the rights of this Pakistani mother of three and the injustices against her continue.
Having being convicted of charges for an alleged crime carried out in Afghanistan she became the first person and only woman in the now discredited War on Terror who was renditioned and forced to stand trial in the U.S.
The lead section of the legal team was appointed by the U.S. government and their credentials simply did not qualify them to deal with the international complexities of her case. They were family and white collar corporate lawyers.
With the exception of Boston lawyer Elaine Whitefield Sharp who was personally recommended by the family, the others were appointed after being handpicked and paid for by the Pakistan Government for the handsome sum of two million dollars. (Was this a generous gift from the government or a way of controlling a case in which the Pakistan government was complicit?)
Ms. Sharp, who originally cleared Dr. Siddiqui’s name from of all the FBI terror allegations, certainly did not endear herself to the legal team when she wrote to the Pakistan Government’s representatives making it clear her duty of loyalty was towards her client, Dr Aafia Siddiqui. This could be why the rest of the legal team has now airbrushed her from case.
The entire legal case focused on a three minute incident in which Dr. Siddiqui was shot at point blank range several times by a group of U.S. soldiers. Despite what happened to her, she was the one who ended up being charged with attempted murder of the soldiers in a police station in Ghazni, Afghanistan.
That the case was deemed to be in the jurisdiction of the New York Court is still open to debate by some of the finest legal minds across the world who believe a mistrial should be called on several counts -- not least of all that the defendant had spent five years in secret U.S. detention including Bagram Prison in Afghanistan.
One member of the defense team, Charles Swift, was told that ex-Guantanamo and ex-Bagram detainee Binyam Mohammed was prepared to testify how he saw Dr. Siddiqui being brutalized and abused in Bagram. His critical eye witness account would unequivocally place the defendant in the hands of the U.S. military during her missing years. I know this for sure because I told Charles Swift myself and personally handed him a video tape of an interview with Binyam confirming this, when we met in 2009.
One would have thought this sensational information would be crucial to Dr. Siddiqui's defense and would certainly explain several untold elements in the case. However this pearl of information was ignored by the legal team.
No wonder then, that she felt the team did not have her best interests at heart. And so she demanded her rights as a defendant to sack her legal representatives. She made this call before and during her trial.
And now she has made it again, but her plea -- her right -- has astonishingly, yet again fallen on deaf ears.
And once again, the person denying her justice is non other than Judge Richard M. Berman. He decided a long time ago that she was not mentally capable of making such a decision to dismiss her lawyers. This is the same judge, by the way, who originally decided that she was, however, mentally fit to stand trial even though several eminently qualified psychiatrists said she was not.
Judge Berman, clearly under intense political pressure to deliver a showcase trial, would not be swayed and eventually two psychiatrists, who were paid $300,000 dollars for their work, announced Dr. Siddiqui was indeed fit to stand trial and might even be malingering.
It was a medical verdict which is now receiving intense scrutiny from a team of doctors from around the world who have come together to question the ethics of those psychiatrists and medics who sat in judgment of the Pakistani mother-of-three. And it is a medical pronouncement, accepted so readily in court by everyone, which I predict will soon collapse under the pressure of this international body of medical experts being led by a British consultant.
So isn't it strange then, that Judge Berman has now personally intervened to ensure that Dr. Siddiqui is dispatched to America's one and only Federal psychiatric prison for women to serve the 86 year sentence he delivered? A few days ago she was moved to Carswell Psychiatric centre in Texas -- its name is known in the U.S. prison system as The Hospital of Horror.
Surely it follows that if Dr. Siddiqui is being sent to this mental institution then it follows that she was not mentally fit to stand trial in the first place.
Once again, Judge Berman has made a decision which exposes his long distance relationship with justice. Not only should the trial be now dismissed as a mistrial but Judge Berman should stand down for bringing his own court into disrepute.
The message is clear to all who believe in justice -- DISMISS the trial, DISMISS the lawyers and DISMISS the judge.
Repatriate the Daughter of Pakistan now.
British journalist Yvonne Ridley is also a patron of Cageprisoners, a London-based NGO concerned with the treatment and welfare of those swept up and imprisoned in the War on Terror
Article Source
Written by Fahad Ansari
Has the Pakistani tiger grown some teeth? Has it remembered its proud history of sacrifice and bloodshed? Has it recalled that it was created with a vision of it becoming a haven for Muslims? Has it finally awoken from its slumber and discovered the meaning of the word ‘sovereignty’?
So it would seem this week with across-the-board condemnations led by President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani against the increasing number of unmanned US drone attacks on Pakistani soil. For September saw the highest number of drone attacks in Pakistan in any single month, a total of 21, killing at least 90 people. An estimated 658 people have been killed by drones in Pakistan since the beginning of the year, almost one third of the total people terminated in this way in the country since 2004. However, this week, whatever shred of sovereignty Pakistan still enjoyed was completely obliterated when NATO and ISAF helicopters, emboldened by almost a decade of Pakistani silence and complicity, flew across the border with Afghanistan and carried out murderous strikes on Pakistani soil. The official government reaction to the strikes was predictable. Uproar. Outrage. Condemnation. President Zardari criticized this violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty as counterproductive and unacceptable at a meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta. Panetta responded that “Pakistan’s sovereignty will be fully respected by the US”.
Within hours of these words being uttered by Panetta’s forked-tongue, NATO helicopters carried out another strike on Pakistani soil, this time executing three Pakistani paramilitary soldiers guarding a military checkpoint and wounding two others. A significant Mafioso-style strike to silence the government. A reminder to Zardari, Gilani and any other Pakistani official who dare open their mouth, about who calls the shots in this relationship. Quite literally. Such is the pitiful position of contempt with which Pakistan is viewed by its friends in high places today.
But are things now beginning to change? Following the killing of these soldiers, Pakistan blocked the main NATO supply route into Afghanistan, preventing dozens of NATO trucks from crossing the Torkham checkpost on the Khyber Pass. US military figures show that supplies pass though Pakistan at a rate of 580 truckloads per day. Interior Minister Rehman Malik stated that “we will have to see whether we are allies or enemies.” Former Army Chief General Mirza Aslam Beg demanded that the Pakistan Air Force should be tasked to shoot down the helicopters and drones involved in attacks on Pakistan’s territories. Incidentally, both the blocking of the NATO supply route and the shooting down of drones were tactics publicly encouraged by Cageprisoners patron Yvonne Ridley on a recent tour of Pakistan calling for the repatriation of Dr Aafia Siddiqui.
Unfortunately, we have seen all this posturing before. In June 2008 US gunships attacked a Pakistani border post in Mohmand tribal agency, killing 11 soldiers. It caused an outcry in Pakistan, but the furore subsided and later that summer the drone campaign started in earnest. By next week, if not much earlier, the NATO supply routes will be open again, the drones will continue to murder and those calling for helicopters to be shot down will probably be detained.
Much has been reported this week about a forthcoming book, ‘Obama’s Wars’ by veteran Washington Post correspondent Bob Woodward, in which the author reveals how the CIA maintains a 3000 strong Afghan paramilitary force that conducts cross-border operations into Pakistan. This is old news for those who have been following this ill-fated escapade. For three years ago, it emerged that as early as 2004, the US military had given elite units broad authority to pursue suspected terrorists into Pakistan, with no mention of telling the Pakistanis in advance. Indeed, striking within Pakistan was exactly what Obama promised he would do three years ago when he was running for office. It is probably the one promise he has kept since becoming President.
For all its passionate calls for its sovereignty to be respected, the fact of the matter is that sovereignty is a long-forgotten concept in Pakistan. The same could be said for self-respect, dignity and courage. Noble principles abandoned during a decade of a foreign policy established on the basis of slavish obedience to the US in what ex-President Musharraf ironically described as a ‘Pakistan First’ policy.
Pakistan has surrendered its sovereignty inch by inch, city by city, province by province. In reality, it has no say in what occurs on its territory. It is a toothless tiger which lets out the occasional roar to remind itself that it exists but all that the world hears is the whimpering of a weak and miserable pussycat.
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For those who don't have the time to read the whole thing, just read the last paragraph. :-( .. so veryyy true.
And this is the Pakistan, we find ourselves in today. Major courtesy of this state of affairs, goes out to the person roaring the loudest today...
