Aafia Siddiqui Trial: Jury Is Still Out

Biggest hole in government’s case against Dr. Aaafia Siddiquie today was the absence of M4 rifle bullet holes that the prosecution had previously presented as the key evidence.

As we had reported earlier the defense had a “glove doesn’t fit” moment in the last day of Dr. Siddiqui’s trial.

Our Contributing Editor, Pramilla Srivastava had written yesterday that “a 3-5 second video of a press conference in Ghazni after the arrest of Siddiqui was entered into evidence last week without any description or explanation of its relevance. That press conference was held in the same room where the alleged incident occurred, before it occurred. It is believed that this video shows the same two holes in the wall that the Prosecution claimed where caused by the M4 rifle allegedly fired by Siddiqui later that same day.”

Defense Attorney Linda Moreno presented a portion of the video to the jury that was taped a day prior to the alleged July 18th incident. Video clearly clearly showed two holes in the wall that six government witnesses had earlier testified were caused by Aafia Sidiqqu firing M4 rifle at the US officials.

This video had the same effect on the jury, as the famous ‘If the Glove don’t fit, you must acquit’ argument.

Jury has begun delibration after Judge Richard Berman once again remineded that Dr. Siddiqui is being charged for attempted murder and not for terrorism.
If the video does exonerate Siddiqui and she is still found guilty it will only have been because the jury believed her to be a terrorist. There is simply no evidence that she picked up an M4 rifle and fired it.

As Tina Foster, spokesperson for the family from the International Justice Network, observed in a recent statement, “regardless of how weak the prosecution’s case, which currently looks like a flea circus, it all comes down to whether an American jury can acquit a woman with a scarf covering her face.”

At the time of filing of this report jury was still delibrating.

Stay tuned for the verdict.