Dr Aafia to plead not guilty to murder charges in US

Dr Aafia Siddiqi, the Pakistani neuroscientist, would plead not guilty at her arraignment in a federal court on Thursday (today) on an indictment alleging attempted murder and assault of US agents during an interrogation session in Afghanistan in July, her lawyer said.

The indictment of Dr Siddiqi, 36, who is being held without bail at a high security federal detention centre in Brooklyn, was announced on Tuesday afternoon. It contains no charges of terrorism.

Lawyer Elizabeth Fink, who said her client would plead not guilty to the charges, also expressed concern that Aafia Siddiqi remained in need of medical attention. “She needs further tests,” Elizabeth Fink was quoted as saying in The New York Times.

“She needs treatment. She needs care. She needs human rights. She needs to be treated in a humane fashion based on what everybody concedes happened to her. And they are not doing it,” the lawyer said.

Fink had expressed her outrage at a press conference last week that even after a court-ordered medical examination; Aafia has not been provided the recommended treatment despite her life-threatening condition.

“Her condition has significantly deteriorated since August four when she was brought to New York,” she told reporters. “Aafia should be transferred to the Bellevue Hospital for urgent medical and psychological treatment,” the lawyer added.

The authorities have alleged that after she was taken into custody in an Afghan police station, she picked up an unsecured rifle and fired at least two shots toward one of the soldiers, who was part of an American team of FBI agents and military personnel, who were about to question her. No one was hit.

Another soldier returned the fire with a pistol, hitting her at least twice in the abdomen. Aafia’s lawyer Elizabeth Fink said of the narrow scope of the charges, “They kept it very tight.” Aafia Siddiqi’s lawyers have said they believe she had been secretly detained since March 2003, when she left her parents’ home in Karachi to visit her uncle in Islamabad.