Pakistan will take all steps to secure the release and return home of a Pakistani woman convicted in a US court for shooting at her US interrogators in Afghanistan, a government spokesman said on Thursday.
Aafia Siddiqui, 37, was convicted in a New York court on Wednesday for grabbing a US officer’s rifle while she was being questioned in 2008 in Afghanistan and firing at FBI agents and military personnel as she was wrestled to the ground.
The jury gave a unanimous verdict on seven counts, including attempted murder and assault. Though guilty on two attempted murder counts, the jury said the crime was not premeditated.
PHOTO: AFP
Siddiqui is a US-trained neuroscientist who spent years living in the US, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The conviction was criticized in Pakistan, where Siddiqui is widely believed to have been innocent and mistreated in detention. Small protests were held in different parts of the country where anti-US feeling is already running high.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told a regular briefing the government would do its best to secure Siddiqui’s release.
“The ultimate objective is to get her back to Pakistan and we would do everything possible and we’ll apply all possible tools in this regard,” Basit said.
President Asif Ali Zardari said he was concerned about the outcome of the trial.
“The president was concerned about the verdict and expressed the hope that justice will ultimately be done as the case passes through subsequent stages in the US judicial system,” the president’s spokesman said in a statement.
None of the US agents or personnel was injured in the July 2008 incident but Siddiqui, who the US government has accused of links with al Qaeda, was shot.
About 2,000 Islamists protesting against Siddiqui’s conviction chanted slogans against the US and support for Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in the southwestern city of Quetta.
Protests were also held in the capital, Islamabad, and the eastern city of Multan.
Siddiqui was arrested by Afghan police, who said she was carrying containers of chemicals and notes referring to mass-casualty attacks and New York landmarks. She was not charged in connection with those materials and the charges she was convicted of do not mention terrorism.
The case centered on the incident that occurred the day after she was arrested in the Afghan police compound, where US soldiers and FBI agents sought to question her.
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
RSS