Free Republic

NEW YORK — A U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist has been convicted of charges she tried to kill Americans while she was detained in Afghanistan. A Manhattan jury found Aafia Siddiqui guilty Wednesday of seven counts of attempted murder. Authorities had called her an Al Qaeda supporter before she was detained in Afghanistan in 2008. They claim she was caught carrying bomb-making instructions and a list of New York landmarks. However, she had not faced terrorism charges.

Two jurors were excused from the "terror mom" trial yesterday after they saw a spectator point his fingers like a gun and silently curse the jury. The unidentified man in a white headdress was taken into custody but it was unclear if charges were filed following the incident in Manhattan federal court.

There's been more upheaval at the Manhattan trial of a U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist linked to Al Qaeda. The judge had Aafia Siddiqui removed from the courtroom Monday after she began ranting about the proceedings. Two jurors were removed shortly afterward for unclear reasons and will be replaced by alternates.

"'Lady Al Qaeda's' lawyers angry over extra security checks at court where she's on trial" BY ALISON GENDAR DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Friday, January 22nd 2010, 3:38 AM SNIPPET: "Lawyers for the so-called "Lady Al Qaeda" are up in arms because spectators at her trial have to show identification and sign in. The extra security check comes on top of a metal detector placed outside the doorway of the Manhattan courtroom where Aafia Siddiqui is on trial for attempted murder. Her defense team said Thursday the precautions are depriving her of a fair trial." Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/01/21/2010-01-21_lady_al_qaedas_lawyers_angry_over_extra_security_checks_at_court_where_shes_on_t.html#ixzz0dKS2tvgx

U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist punctuated the first day of her attempted murder trial Tuesday by shouting that the prosecution's first witness was lying, prompting her to be pulled from the courtroom. Aafia Siddiqui, a reputed al-Qaida supporter, is charged with trying to kill U.S. military officers and federal agents in Afghanistan in July 2008. Her outburst came less than two hours after her trial began in federal court in Manhattan. U.S. Army Capt. Robert Snyder testified that documents found in Siddiqui's purse included targets for a mass casualty attack, including the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street and...

SNIPPET: ""If they have a Zionist or Israeli background...they are all mad at me," said Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained neuroscientist charged with attempted murder. "I have a feeling everyone here is them - subject to genetic testing....They should be excluded if you want to be fair," she told Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Berman." SNIPPET: "Berman ruled the jury can hear about the target list and other handwritten notes but tossed as evidence the chemicals and mass-produced documents from "how-to" terror manuals. Prosecutors also are barred from bringing up Siddiqui's alleged ties or sympathies with Al Qaeda because they would create...

A jury was chosen Thursday in the "Lady Al Qaeda" trial - but not before the defendant interrupted the process with more outbursts and was tossed from the courtroom. A day after she demanded Jews be excluded from the jury, Aafia Siddiqui went to deliver more rants about Jews and the 9/11 terror attacks. "I have nothing to do with 9/11," she said when a potential juror who cited her personal experience on Sept. 11 was dismissed. Siddiqui is on trial in Manhattan federal court for attempted murder. She was arrested by Afghan police after being caught in July 2008...

A Pakistan native who was trained as a scientist in the US and suspected of being an al-Qaida operative has promised to boycott her January trial in New York. Aafia Siddiqui interrupted lawyers to announce in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday that she did not plan to participate in her trial. Then, during a break, she told US marshals she did not want to return to the courtroom when they led her out as she continued talking. Siddiqui faces charges after US authorities said she grabbed a gun and fired it at a police station in Afghanistan in July...

WASHINGTON: Pakistan has officially demanded U.S that Pakistani detainee Dr. Aafia Siddiqui be provided under Pakistan’s custody here on late Tuesday, sources said. Pakistan ambassador to United States Hussain Haqqani has forwarded a letter to U.S. State Department demanding sue motto custody of Aafia Siddiqui to Pakistan, it added. Letter reveals Pakistan’s demand to U.S. to immediately entrust Dr. Aafia and her three children to Pakistan custody, Pakistan embassy sources said. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui matter has been politicized in Pakistan and the people want her immediate release, it further added.

The news last month that police had arrested Sajid Badat at his home in Gloucester, England, shook many Britons. The charges against him concerned his training with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and his possessing PETN explosives, the same substance would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid had tried to set off. Police believe Badat intended to carry off the very first suicide bombing in the United Kingdom. But not everyone was shaken by this news. Gloucester's Muslim community esteemed Badat too much to credit the charges. One admirer called him "a walking angel" and "the bright star of our mosque." Another described him...

Aafia Siddiqui, the alleged Mata Hari of Al Qaeda, was indicted by federal authorities in New York today for allegedly attempting to kill the FBI agents, US soldiers, interpreters and others who attempted to interview her following her July capture in Afghanistan. The seven count indictment detailed her alleged possession of detailed handwritten notes on "dirty bombs," terrorist recruiting, New York targets, and the relative casualty rates for various weapons of mass destruction.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday outlined a pattern of bizarre and deceptive conduct by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist who killed himself last week, presenting a sweeping but circumstantial case that he was solely responsible for mailing the deadly anthrax letters that killed five people in 2001. After nearly seven years of a troubled investigation, officials of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department declared that the case had been solved. Jeffrey A. Taylor, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said the authorities believed “that based on the evidence we had collected, we...

An American-trained Pakistani neuroscientist with ties to operatives of Al Qaeda has been charged with trying to kill American soldiers and FBI agents in a police station in Afghanistan last month, and was scheduled to face a judge in New York on Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department. The scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, who studied at Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was transferred Monday to New York and was expected to be arraigned Tuesday on charges of attempted murder and assault, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement. ...Americans entered a...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

A top Al Qaeda operative plotted to smuggle weapons into New York Harbor in the shipping containers of a Garment District firm, the Daily News has learned. Days before he was captured in Pakistan in March, suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed met in Karachi with the owner of a W. 35th St. clothing importing company and his son, law enforcement sources said. Al Qaeda's No. 3 man offered to invest $200,000 in International Management Group in exchange, federal authorities now believe, for access to IMG's Port Newark-bound shipping containers, sources say. Mohammed "is obsessed with attacking the United States,...

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - A series of witnesses place six top al-Qaida fugitives in Africa buying up diamonds in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a confidential report by UN-backed prosecutors obtained by The Associated Press. The first-person accounts detailed by the prosecutors add to long-standing claims that al-Qaida laundered millions of dollars in terror funds through African diamonds before launching its deadliest offensive. Al-Qaida figures, including some already wanted in pre-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. targets, dealt directly with then-president Charles Taylor and other leaders and warlords in the West African country of Liberia from 1999...

WASHINGTON: An award-winning former MIT student born in Pakistan has become the first publicly identified international female suspect in the war on terrorism. Aafia Siddiqui, now 32, received a biology degree from MIT in 1994. University records show she lived in an on-campus dorm in 1995 and listed her home address as Karachi. A mother of three children, Aafia was estranged from her husband Mohammed Amjad Khan, a Harvard-trained anesthesiologist. Aafia set off alarm bells in the US when she was named by terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a coordinator or helper for al-Qaeda in the US. Around the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is warning police that terrorists could construct a simple but deadly chemical weapon out of materials readily available. "Little or no training is required to assemble and deploy such a device due to its simplicity," the FBI said Wednesday in its weekly intelligence bulletin to about 18,000 law enforcement agencies. The bulletin provides no details of a specific threat or possible location of an attack. It does say that terrorists could take advantage of building ventilation systems, air intakes or enclosed areas to disperse toxic chemical gas. Law enforcement officials previously have warned that al-Qaida...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is warning police that terrorists could construct a simple but deadly chemical weapon out of materials readily available. "Little or no training is required to assemble and deploy such a device due to its simplicity," the FBI said Wednesday in its weekly intelligence bulletin to about 18,000 law enforcement agencies. The bulletin provides no details of a specific threat or possible location of an attack. It does say that terrorists could take advantage of building ventilation systems, air intakes or enclosed areas to disperse toxic chemical gas. Law enforcement officials previously have warned that al-Qaida...

US intelligence officials are now beginning to believe that a woman, some sources described as 'the Al Qaeda chick', may have helped planned logistics, but was not a major participant in the terror network's activities. Dr Aafia Siddiqui (31), an alumna of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was detained in Karachi on March 29 as soon as she returned from an overseas trip. Sources told rediff.com that her links to Al Qaeda had been corroborated by the outfit's operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, currently in the custody of US law enforcement officials after his arrest in Karachi a few...