Regarding the twisted trial (end January - to February 3, 2010) in the court of Judge Richard Berman, lower Manhatten, New York and the recent cruel sentencing of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui under the same judge and in the same court:
How can so many intelligent reporters assume that Aafia put these "scary" items in that bag? The bag which according to rule of law and even the stated purposes in the trial itself should have had nothing to do with her indictment and sentencing and yet did because it was made as obvious as possible in court and via all manner of sloppy reporting...including recently on NPR.org
Of course any reasoned observer of the Trial and Sentencing of Aafia Siddiqui would ask questions about this cartoonishly dramatic collection of items contained in the bag - such as how and who may have put these there? Yet the standard statement even by journalists who should know much better is that the contents of this bag prove Aafia was "either a luntatic or a terrorist" without even raising any other possibilities. Many reporters seem to only go so far as to list some of these items - often in part - and to murky the waters as far as what the actual sentencing was about. Yet why? And to whom do they owe doing so? And when they do this, then at least raise the other possible reasons for a drugged (by US), threatened, tortured and dazed Aafia - bereaved of two missing children at that time - to be holding that bag (in more ways than one).
Aafia claimed she didn't recognize these items and bag and I believe her. Certainly, given the growing list of proven travesties by the US warriors, it's MUCH easier to believe her claims than those representing the US in this case and in many others.
Few who cared about Dr. Aafia's possible lower sentencing or repatriation wanted to bring this bag of dangerous items up out of concern that few would ask the deeper questions and assume Aafia herself had to assemble that rather dramatic collection. (Even with the long history of so many murky "plantings" of the same).
Yet now, since so many have reported these contents (which were strangely allowed and referred to within the trial?) it's time to raise the question HOW and WHY this particular collection? With the known drugging that went on with Aafia, the fact her claims are backed up that she's no artist, that she was asked to copy things down by intimidating persons - possibly under threat that her children would be hurt or raped and that she was asked to translate certain specified items handed to her by those who had kidnapped her.
Obviously, there are plenty of aspects even of this one "layer" of Aafia's history to now begin to dig much deeper than before. Look for more synopsis of Dr. Aafia's Jan-Feb Trial of 2010.
Interesting reports are coming in that the Wiki-leaks may indicate a complete absence of any report of implications named later. The record does show an incredible litany of contradictions even by the US official recorded reports.
Folk: Time to question the many assumptions being made - not only in reference to Aafia yet to many hundreds if not thousands of others such cases of the detained in this so-called "war on terror" which in actuality is more and more a War of US Terrorism upon the innocent and unreasonably kidnapped, intimidated, coerced, tortured, indefinitely imprisoned and frequently unjustly charged.
Surely it's not hard to see that Dr. Aafia's history and reports of all the above are reasonable claims given that torture, rendition and so much more have been reported now for years by the International Committee of the Red Cross/Red Crescent among many other highly-respected humanitarian and rights organizations. Many unsavory practices by US officials, military and others are currently being reported as ongoing, continuing unabated in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan and many more places under the auspices or beginnings at least of US-jurisdiction, training and organized settings. (As well as many other places where secret/black cells still exist, despite the current US administration's promises and statements to the contrary, there are now thought to be "floating prisons...)
So folk, with such a US background of related abuses as this, let's please look a little deeper and ask the missing yet all important questions.
Most worth also discussing is whether or not anyone with Dr. Aafia Siddiqui background of birth or religion has a hair of a chance for justice in America.
Look for plenty more such discussions and Op Eds on these urgent questions here and many other places in the days ahead.
1 comment:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24547.htm
Attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, said back in 2008 that Siddiqui had been carrying what amounted to “conveniently incriminating evidence.”“Of course they found all this stuff on her. It was planted on her. She is the ultimate victim of the American dark side,” another one of her attorneys had told the Associated Press in 2008.Siddiqui also told the jury that her children were constantly on her mind and that she was disoriented at the time of her arrest in 2008.
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