![Aafia Siddiqui (left, in veil) protests to Judge Richard Berman during jury selection for her trial in federal court.[Jane Rosenberg]](http://www.vinnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/tri7.jpg "*Jan 13 - 00:05*")
Manhattan, NY – Jury selection in the “Lady Al Qaeda” trial got off to a bizarre start with the accused terrorist telling jurors she was “boycotting” – and demanding Jews be excluded from the panel.
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“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.
Prospective jurors weren’t present for that outburst, but they were in the courtroom to hear her say, “I’m boycotting the trial…there are too many injustices.”
At another point, Siddiqui repeatedly refused to talk to her own lawyers, saying she didn’t trust them.
“I don’t trust you either,” she told Berman.
She even tried to toss a handwritten note to prosecutors requesting time each day to pray. Berman ruled she could leave the courtroom at 3:30 p.m. for 15 minutes of prayer.
Siddiqui, 37, is accused of picking up an M-4 Army rifle and firing two rounds at a team of Americans who tried to question her in Afghanistan on July 18, 2008.
Prosecutors argue she screamed, “Allah Akbar” and vowed to kill Americans before she was wrestled to the ground. She allegedly had two pounds of poisonous sodium cyanide and hundreds of pages of notes and documents on how to build chemical and biological weapons.
The terror guides featured targets including the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, prosecutors said.
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 bias.
“Prosecutors also are barred from bringing up Siddiqui’s alleged ties or sympathies with Al Qaeda because they would create a bias.”
This is what it is insane to try enemy combatants in criminal courts.
Why the heck is she in our justice system is she did her crime in Afghanistan??? She should be tried as a militant combatant. My tax dollars at work.
“Siddiqui, 37, is accused of picking up an M-4 Army rifle and firing two rounds at a team of Americans who tried to question her in Afghanistan on July 18, 2008.”
And for this she gets a free trip to the US, a fair trial, 3 hots and a cot each day, plus time off for davening? They should have just fired two rounds back at her, and saved the good people of the United States the cost of a trial.
Just wait & see what KSM the mastermind will do at his trial that our supreme leader with his superior intellect has decided should take place in NY
There are many yiddin I wouldn’t want on a jury either for other reasons but I don’t think she has a legal basis to exclude ALL jews just as a white person could not exclude all black jurors or vice versa. I can see, for example, where she would be happy to have some ehrleche yid from the NK in the jury pool.
aha so the circus is starting and they want to close gitmo, let them have military tribunals or lock them in jail and throw away the keys!
Now the Purim Shpiel starts. The US Court system will be a mockery in the eyes of the world. we will have more of our own freinds siding with this monster than with our court system. Never ever should such an evil monster be put before the eyes and ears of our socalists liberal media and so called freindly countries.
From a purely logical stand point she has a good point!
Why is a purely local Afghanistani case being prosecuted in New York?
“Prosecutors are also barred by bringing up her ties with El Qeida in order not to create a bias”… what a justice system we have in America.. I won’t be surprised if all jewish jurors will be sent home.. Listen, after all why shouldn’t a lovely innocent muslim lady get a fair trial? our justice system ROCKS!
Laugh all you want but her statements are not so different from yidden who claim the gov’t and courts are against them because of anti-semitism
The start of Obama’s 3-ring circus show-trials. This kicks off Armageddon for the people of the free world when we have to be subjected to the rantings of ignorant hate-mongers and bloodthirsty murderers.
This is what we get when trying terrorists in civil court, they will the court a circus.
this Obama guy in he white house will lead this country to ruin.
if she tried killing americans than she should boycott them as well because they also hate her NO????
If her lawyers know anything about trial work, they would never have allowed a Jew onto the panel. In fact, the government and the defense probably have already agreed that Jews won’t be on the panel without requiring the defense to use peremptory challenges to get them off. This is not a racist or biased trial tactic; in my trial work, I always try to keep people whom I think are biased for whatever reason against my clients off jury panels. That’s part of my job as a trial lawyer.
They let her sit in court with that shmatta covering 90% of her face????
Can a criminal attorney weigh in on why the evidence i sbeing excluded.
Although not sure why she is in the US at all, however the Jury needs to be selected to not have any bias towards this woman that means excluding anyone that says they have a bias, however they can not say if you are Jewish you are dismissed from this Jury.
I am sure her lawyers are quite good and have already started the tactic that she is mentally unstable and that is why she did what she did.
As for the link or sympathies with Al queda, that can be a big problem now in the USA most people know we are fighting them and especially in NYC they are the “bad guys” so if the prosecutors wanted to lead the Jury all that is needs is a few drops of well its possible she was instructed by Al queda to do this … and the Jury will now be biased against her and she will have to prove beyond any doubt that she is in fact not associated with them. Our justice is based on innocent until proven guilty and thus the court rooms have to remove evidence that can taint the trail because they will lead to bias with no facts to back them up.
don’t understand why only Jews they hate all Americans and want to kill them all so no Americans can seat on the jury only wild Arabs
Does she expect the jewish judge (Berman is jewish. Isn’t he) to brimg over 12 people from Afganistan to sit on the jury? Come on. Let het boycot the trial. Have the trial in her abstance, throw her in the slammer and throw the key in the river.
Change you voted for, but did not imagine. How’s that for the election? Everyone in NY should be happy now. This is only the beginning of more to come.
send her to saudi arabia their shell get a fair trial
She wants genetic testing to determine if Jurors are Jewish?.She should be tested if she is human.Pereh Adam
I love this trial stuff. It allows these G-dless freaks to be exposed in public. It allows them to humiliate themselves and the groups they represent in public forums. They they will be put in prisons where they will be regularly beaten by the other inmates. Then we will execute them.
The humiliating end that each of these dogs will ultimately receive is fine with me.
she should be executed and feed to the dogs and done with you are wasting my hard earned money for this this piece’work
I was recently summoned for jury duty, and killed the entire day for my $40 check. Of the one hundred other people with me in the jury pool, only 7 of 14 were chosen going into the third round of jury selection starting at 4:30 PM, I sat for the second round so I was excused. So for a punk armed robbery jury selection prior to trial the Gov’t spends $4000. not counting the salaries of the judge, the bailiffs, the court reporter (yes there was one) and the prosecutor and the court appointed lawyers.
And now you’re telling me that evidence, two pounds of highly poisonous chemicals, cannot be admitted at trial because the evidence might prejudice the jury? The time has come to abolish the jury system. Political correctness has reached a new low. We can’t admit the truth because then we won’t be friends with the people that want to kill us. IDIOTS!! I DON’T WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO KILL ME!
Political correctness is indeed a disease. Refuah shelaimah to you all.
“Unfortunately, in Communist Republic Of NY you have not figured out how to properly dispose of terrorists once convicted.”
Quite true. New York’s last legal execution was in 1962. Think of all of the high-profile murders there since then — and those killers weren’t killed. Even though New York, amid much ballyhoo, “restored” capital punishment to the books in the 1990s, no one was ever executed under that law, which had many loopholes in it. It was finally quashed by the courts in the early 2000s, ending the charade that liberal New York would ever kill ANY criminal, no matter how heinous his crime.
While this trial is being held in New York, the case has nothing to do with New York law, it’s a federal trial on federal charges. But don’t hold your breath waiting for this terrorist tart to ever be executed, even if found guilty. The US has NEVER executed anyone for terrorism, other than Timothy McVeigh. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, is still alive. So are such Islamic terrorists convicted under federal law as Ramzi Yussef, Omar Abdel Rahman (a/k/a “The Blind Sheik”), El Sayyid Nosair, and shoe-bomber Richard Reid. KSM won’t be executed either. Might upset “the Arab street.”