Outbursts by Terror Suspect at a Competency Hearing -- Dr. Aafia Siddiqui pleads not guilty

Outbursts by Terror Suspect at a Competency Hearing

By BENJAMIN WEISER

Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist accused of trying to kill American soldiers and F.B.I. agents in Afghanistan, repeatedly interrupted a hearing on Monday about her competency to stand trial. She declared in a series of rambling, often disjointed outbursts that she had not shot anyone and was not against the United States.
"I didn't fire any bullets," she said at one point.
"I'm really not against America. I never was. I still am not," she said later.
During the hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, psychological experts differed on whether Ms. Siddiqui had faked symptoms of mental illness or suffered from a genuine mental disorder, and if she was competent to stand trial.
But as the experts vied to talk about her mental state, it was Ms. Siddiqui who seemed to be most intent on getting in the first and last words, and many in between.
"I'm not psychotic — I can assure you I am not," she said in a discourse after the cross-examination of a psychologist who had concluded that she was suffering from mental illness and was not competent to stand trial.
During another expert's testimony, when the discussion turned to her not eating in prison, she interjected, "It was Ramadan, just for the record."
"Excuse me," said the judge, Richard M. Berman. She replied, "I didn't ask to come here."
Judge Berman did not rule on the competency issue on Monday, and asked for further filings from both sides.
Ms. Siddiqui, 37, was taken into custody in Ghazni, Afghanistan, last July, after she was found loitering with suspicious items in her handbag, including handwritten notes that referred to a "mass casualty attack," and listed various landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, an indictment says.
While she was being detained, the indictment charges, she picked up an unsecured rifle and fired at least two shots toward a soldier who was part of an American team of F.B.I. agents and military personnel about to question her. No one was hit; another soldier returned fire, hitting Ms. Siddiqui in the torso. She has recovered from that wound.
Ms. Siddiqui was charged with attempted murder and other charges. She has pleaded not guilty.
After a court-ordered evaluation found that she was mentally unfit to stand trial, Judge Berman ordered her sent for further evaluation. If Judge Berman ultimately finds her competent, she faces a trial in the fall; if not, there is likely to be a legal fight over whether the authorities may forcibly administer medication to try to restore her to competency, her lawyer, Dawn M. Cardi, said after the hearing.
Her client's interruptions, Ms. Cardi said, were "an example of her mental illness."
"You could see that I have no control over her, her speaking under circumstances where it is not in her best interest to speak," she said.
Prosecutors had no comment. In court, a federal prosecutor, Christopher L. LaVigne, cited findings by psychiatrists that Ms. Siddiqui was competent to stand trial. "This is malingering," he told the judge, adding, "It's Miss Siddiqui's attempt to avoid responsibility for these crimes."
Ms. Siddiqui, who studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, wore a white fabric head covering that left only her eyes visible.
Her outbursts alternated with periods of quiet, sometimes seeming to listen intently, sometimes placing her head down on her arms on the table. As the afternoon progressed, her commentary grew heated at times, as she touched on war and peace, Zionists and Jews, and her anger at being strip-searched. She occasionally even turned to address the spectators.
On the United States, she said, "America as a nation has been framed to look bad." She added later: "I want to make peace with the United States of America. I'm not an enemy. I never was."

 
 
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N A D E E M   M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
 http://nadeemmalik.wordpress.com/

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Piecing Together an Immigrant’s Life the U.S. Refused to See

Piecing Together an Immigrant's Life the U.S. Refused to See

By NINA BERNSTEIN

When the 43-year-old man died in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2005, the very fact seemed to fall into a black hole. Although a fellow inmate scrawled a note telling immigrant advocates that the detainee's symptoms of a heart attack had long gone unheeded, government officials would not even confirm that the dead man had existed.
In March, more than three years after the death, federal immigration authorities acknowledged that they had overlooked it, and added a name, "Ahmad, Tanveer," to their list of fatalities in custody.
Even as the man's death was retrieved from official oblivion, however, his life remained a mystery, The New York Times reported in an April article on the case that pointed up the secrecy and lack of accountability in the nation's ballooning immigration detention system. Just who the man was and why he had been detained were unknown.
Yet at the end of a long trail of government documents and interviews with friends and relatives in New York, Texas and his native Pakistan, there was his name, "Ahmad, T.," still listed last week on the tenants' buzzer board at the Eldorado, an apartment building in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he had lived for years. And the tenant list itself — Jones, Nadler, Mahmud, Fong, Quinones — testified to the long history of American immigration that he had tried so hard to join.
Tanveer Ahmad, it turns out, was a longtime New York City cabdriver who had paid thousands of dollars in taxes and immigration application fees. Whether out of love, loneliness or the quest for a green card, he had twice married American women after entering the country on a visitor's visa in 1993. His only trouble with the law was a $200 fine for disorderly conduct in 1997: While working at a Houston gas station, he had displayed the business's unlicensed gun to stop a robbery.
It would come back to haunt him. For if Mr. Ahmad's overlooked death showed how immigrants could vanish in detention, his overlooked American life shows how 9/11 changed the stakes for those caught in the nation's tangle of immigration laws.
In the end, his body went back in a box to his native village, to be buried by his Pakistani widow and their two children, conceived on his only two trips home in a dozen years. He had always hoped to bring them all to the United States, his widow, Rafia Perveen, said in a tearful telephone interview through a translator.
"He said America is very good," she recalled. "When it comes to the treatment of Muslims in the U.S., he had faith in the rule of law. He said, 'In America, they don't bother anyone just for no reason.' "
When immigration agents burst into Mr. Ahmad's two-room Flatbush apartment on Aug. 2, 2005, they were looking for someone else, his friends say — a roommate suspected of violating his student visa by working. But they ordered Mr. Ahmad to report to immigration headquarters in Manhattan on Aug. 11.
He went, and was delivered in shackles to the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold, N.J. His Texas misdemeanor had popped up in the computer as an offense involving a deadly weapon — reason enough, after 9/11, for authorities to detain him pending deportation proceedings.
Like several million other residents of the United States, Mr. Ahmad occupied the complicated gray zone between illegal and legal immigration. Though he had overstayed his first visa, he had repeatedly been authorized to work while his applications for "adjustment of status" were pending. Twice before 9/11 he had been allowed back into the country after visits to Pakistan.
But the green card application sponsored by his Bronx-born wife, Shanise Farrar, had been officially denied in March 2005, leaving him without a valid visa. Although the couple could have reapplied, by the time he was arrested they had not spoken in more than a year, and Ms. Farrar, who had received a letter threatening a marriage fraud investigation, was unaware of his detention.
As she tells it, theirs was an intimate relationship ruined by 9/11. With regret, she recalled her reaction: "I was just cursing him. I was like, 'You people come here and kill us and mess up our city.' He was trying to convince me and prove to me that he's a good man, not those people."
"I loved him," she added. "It was just, once the World Trade Center came down, I changed my mind."
He was a natural immigrant, friends said, the fifth child in a poor but striving family, the captain of his village school's victorious cricket team who grew into a funny and generous adult. After his family arranged his engagement to his cousin Rafia, he left to work in a brother's store in Saudi Arabia. But once he visited New York, he had eyes only for the United States.
"His brother called him to come back," recalled Mohammad S. Tariq, 58, a cabby whose Brooklyn apartment was Mr. Ahmad's first home in the city. "But Tanveer did not want to go back."
Instead he followed a job to Texas. He worked the night shift at a gas station that was robbed at gunpoint 7 times in 35 days, said the manager, Kathy Jean Lewis — who married him while she was battling thyroid cancer.
After her recovery, Mr. Ahmad made a three-month trip back to Pakistan, where he wed his cousin in 1998. His marriage to Ms. Lewis, now 53, was annulled by a Texas court in 1999.
She harbors no hard feelings. "He was emotionally supportive when I was sick," she said, recalling how Mr. Ahmad took her to midnight dinners at her favorite restaurant when she was undergoing radiation treatment. "He just had a very big heart."
His second American wife, Ms. Farrar, tells a similar story.
They wed at the city clerk's office in Manhattan in July 2000, when Ms. Farrar was a single mother struggling to support her young son as a car service dispatcher, and they applied for a green card. She says she did not know he had a wife in Pakistan, and she denies that hers was "a paper marriage," as Mr. Ahmad's Pakistani widow put it. Ms. Farrar, 36, still speaks wistfully of family outings to Six Flags Great Adventure and the Bronx Zoo.
Then came 9/11. "Friends and family, ringing my phone — 'You better watch it, you maybe married a terrorist,' " Ms. Farrar recalled, evoking a period when hundreds of Muslim immigrants in New York were swept up on the strength of vague suspicions. "I would bring it to him. He was scared anybody was going to hurt him."
They patched things up before a November 2002 immigration interview, Ms. Farrar said. But they flunked it — the interviewing agent apparently doubted their marriage was genuine — and never appeared for the second-chance interview in 2003, Ms. Farrar said, because they had split up.
By the time Mr. Ahmad was taken in handcuffs to immigration court on Aug. 17, 2005, all he wanted was to return to Pakistan. He insisted on giving up his right to contest deportation, even though he faced a 10-year bar on returning, said Kenneth M. Schonfeld, an immigration lawyer hurriedly hired by Mr. Ahmad's friends, all cabdrivers from Pakistan.
"He couldn't stand the thought of having to stay in custody," the lawyer said, and he seemed "really terrified" of the Monmouth jail. "It's a place that would frighten or depress anyone."
Three weeks later, Mr. Ahmad was dead. Since he had no known health problems, his friends were shocked and disbelieving. They were told that Mr. Ahmad had suffered a heart attack in the jail, and despite all efforts to revive him, had been pronounced dead in a hospital emergency room at 5:51 p.m. on Sept. 9. An autopsy cited "occlusive coronary atherosclerosis."
His friends did not know that the jail had a history of detainee complaints of medical neglect and physical abuse, and did not allow guards to send detainees to the medical unit without prior approval. Similar complaints have been made about many detention centers, spurring the Obama administration to order a review of the system.
According to the jail's internal investigation, Mr. Ahmad walked into the medical unit shortly after 3:50 p.m. on Sept. 9 and "was seen immediately." But the letter scrawled by a fellow inmate contended that before he showed up there, Mr. Ahmad's pleas for treatment had been rebuffed by a guard for an hour.
Complaints about his death were filed with the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, documents show; the matter was passed for internal inquiry to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with the notation that it need not report back its findings.
By 2007, when the immigration agency compiled its first list of deaths in immigration detention, under pressure from Congress and the news media, Mr. Ahmad's death was not on it.
Yet if his death was not counted, his arrest was — it had been added to the agency's anti-terrorism statistics, according to government documents showing he was termed a "collateral" apprehension in Operation Secure Commute, raids seeking visa violators after the London transit bombings.
How his children will remember him is another matter. Without the money Mr. Ahmad used to send, they had to move in with relatives far from his grave in Pakistan. But his 10-year-old son clings to a souvenir, the widow said: "He keeps his father's photograph in his pocket."

Margot Williams contributed research.

 
 
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N A D E E M   M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
 http://nadeemmalik.wordpress.com/

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The illegality of drones

The illegality of drones

By Dr Tariq Hassan
Tuesday, 02 Jun, 2009 | 12:58 AM PST

 

MEMBERS of the United Nations are categorically required by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of any state.

Yet, the United States, a founding member of the UN, has in its relations with Pakistan used both with impunity.

The missile attacks by the drones in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan are not only continuing as a sad legacy of the Bush era, they seem to be increasing under the current Obama administration. Being of the same vintage as the writer — from Harvard Law School — and a product of international law professors like Louis B. Sohn who was a great proponent of the UN, one had expected President Obama to have more respect for international law and institutions. This expectation, though grounded in the youthful idealism instilled by Professor Sohn, was witnessed in President Obama's early pronouncements on the closure of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Having earned tremendous respect among international lawyers for his principled stand on Guantanamo Bay, President Obama seems to be faltering on the issue of US drone attacks in Pakistan. Besides their manifest illegality, the drone attacks are unjust since they cause civilian casualties. Even though the drone attacks are intended to kill suspected militants, the US acknowledges the fact that they cause 'collateral damage'.

Thousands of people have fled their homes in the tribal areas to escape the indiscriminate and unwarranted attacks and have become refugees in their own country. The number of these internally displaced persons is increasing by the day and the situation is fast becoming unmanageable and doing little to gain the support of the people for the so-called war on terror.

The US does not have any legal right to launch missile attacks on Pakistan through drones or otherwise. Under international law, it is only entitled to self-defence pursuant to Article 51 of the UN Charter which preserves "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations". This limited use of force under Article 51 is an exception to the general prohibition prescribed by Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

The language of Article 51 does not allow pre-emptive attacks. As a matter of established practice, acts of self-defence are legitimate only if they meet certain preconditions. Accordingly, the use of force in self-defence is permitted only (i) in case of necessity, where there is an attack and the use of force is necessary to repel it and is defensive in nature; and (ii) to the extent that the defensive use of force is proportionate to the attack and not punitive in nature. Although some states assert the right of pre-emptive self-defence in order to avert attacks, where there is threat of imminent attack there is generally no consensus among international scholars.

The US drone attacks fail on all counts. They are not carried out to repel an attack and instead constitute preemptive strikes which not only use disproportionate but also deceptive force against suspected militants and innocent civilians.

It is important to bear in mind that the UN Security Council, while recognising and reaffirming the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with the UN Charter in Resolutions 1368 and 1373 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the US, did not authorise the use of force in any way. Even later, UNSC resolutions such as Resolution 1540, made under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (which provides for enforcement action), to combat terrorism did not provide for the use of force. Therefore, the use of force in Pakistan by the US is not consistent with its obligations under the UN Charter.

The US has sought to legitimise its interventions in Pakistan by other means. For example, former President Bush authorised the military cross-border use of force from Afghanistan into Pakistan by means of domestic legislation. Sanctioning the concept of hot pursuit across international boundaries through domestic legislation is of no legal consequence. Sanctioned killing across borders not only negates due process it precludes accountability as well. In any event, domestic measures do not limit or override international obligations in any way and adversely affect international relations instead.

There is mounting criticism at all levels in Pakistan against the US drone attacks. However, the US continues unabashedly to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists through drone attacks in Pakistan. Needless to say this drastic measure used as a counter-terrorism strategy is not consistent with either conventional or customary international law. The use of force against non-state actors, particularly targeted killing, is not only proscribed by the general principles of international human rights law but also by specific rules of international criminal law and the laws of war.

No one has or can be granted a licence to kill under international law. Extra-judicial killings, outside the realm of war, at the international level remain a crime and are included in international criminal activities like genocide. Moreover, unwarranted killings even during war constitute war crimes (e.g. wilful killing; killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer any means of defence, has surrendered; killing or wounding treacherously individuals belonging to a hostile nation or army; and killing or wounding treacherously a combatant adversary).

Nothing can be more treacherous than killing and wounding through the stealth action of drones. The drone attacks are, therefore, a clear violation of established international norms and practices. In any case, whether legal or not, the drone attacks are not helping Washington's counter-terrorism efforts.

Under the circumstances, President Obama should take the moral high ground and review his administration's policy of such targeting inside Pakistan. Even if it is not willing to reassess its legal position, Washington must re-evaluate it in the light of public policy given the moral hazard created by the immense human suffering produced by the attacks.

The writer, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

 
 
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N A D E E M   M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
 http://nadeemmalik.wordpress.com/

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