New York:
For just over a week, a Pakistani neuroscientist being tried on charges of trying to kill American soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan has been kicked out of the courtroom nearly every time she has spoken, her angry outbursts judged a disruption.
But on Thursday afternoon, she was finally allowed to speak without interruption or repercussion as she took the stand to deny the attempted murder and assault charges against her.
In nearly two hours of spirited testimony, the neuroscientist, Aafia Siddiqui, 37, denied that she had grabbed an M4 rifle in a police station in the city of Ghazni, Afghanistan, on July 18, 2008, and fired on American officers and agents.
"This is the biggest lie, that I've sometimes been forced to smile under my scarf," said Siddiqui, whose eyes were the only part of her face not hidden by her cream-colored head covering. "Of course not."
The weapon was never in her hands, said Siddiqui, who explained that she was merely trying to escape from the station because she feared being tortured. She had been arrested the day before and was found to be carrying documents on how to make explosives and a list of New York targets, officials said. Her testimony, in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, had been in doubt until the last minute.
Siddiqui's lawyers had tried to keep her muzzled to protect herself, arguing that she is mentally ill and "driven by an irrational and delusional belief that she can convince listeners that she can bring world peace," according to a motion they filed on Monday.
Prosecutors, though, said Siddiqui, who has been linked by some intelligence officials to al-Qaida, had a sound mind, and they called her outbursts "opportunistic and calculated." Ultimately, Judge Richard M. Berman sided with them. "I think she clearly understands the process," Berman said.
Elaine Sharp, a defense lawyer, focused many of her questions on Siddiqui's academic background, which includes an undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied with Noam Chomsky, and a master's degree and a Ph.D. from Brandeis University.
Sharp also called attention to an essay that earned Siddiqui a prize when she was a teenager, called "How Intercultural Attitudes Help Shape a Multinational World."
But during a withering cross-examination that seemed to fluster Siddiqui, her years in college were cast in a different light. Jenna Dabbs, an assistant U.S. attorney, suggested that Siddiqui's work with chemicals in campus laboratories had prepared her to make explosives, which she strenuously denied.
"To answer your question, I don't know how to make a dirty bomb," she said. "I couldn't kill a rat myself," adding that she had to ask others to dispose off lab animals.
When presented with drawings of firearms that prosecutors said were found in the purse she was carrying when she was arrested, Siddiqui denied any knowledge about guns. But Dabbs asked whether Siddiqui had in fact shot "hundreds of rounds" at the Braintree Rifle & Pistol Club outside Boston as an undergraduate. It was the first time that issue had come up in the trial, which began last week.
"I have no recollection of that," she said. "Actually, you can take that as a no."
Though she mostly stuck to the topics raised by the prosecution and the defense, Siddiqui did mention being tortured in secret prisons before her arrest by a "group of people pretending to be Americans doing bad things in America's name."
If true, that could explain some of Siddiqui's behavior, said Tina Foster, a lawyer with the International Justice Network who is also a spokeswoman for Siddiqui's family.
Jurors, who are expected to get the case next Tuesday, may be hard to win over, Foster said outside of court. "It's very difficult to overcome the type of prejudice against someone who doesn't want to show their face," she said, "and whose behavior can be out of the ordinary."