Thursday, February 11, 2010

Police state, American style

P.C. Roberts
"""As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui an American citizen of Pakistani origin might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children were with her at the time she was abducted, one an eight-month old baby. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach resulting in her near death.

On February 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation."""

Might as well trust mafia dons as trust the ...Black Robe posse (in fact, hardly indistinguishable most of the time)

5 comments:

CharleyCarp said...

I'm willing to join you in blaming the judiciary, but on the account given, this looks like 95% executive malfeasance and 5% judiciary malfeasance.

It's hard to have sane outcomes in the midst of a politics and a media fit only for a nation of pathetic losers.

J said...

You are probably correct, Mr Carp. The executives--or military brass, chief joints of Staff, uh joints staffs of CHIEF--gave some orders, and "disappeared" Miss Siddiqui, as Roberts puts it.

Nonetheless, the Black Robes got a hold of the case, and even if just lackeys for the executives, the judiciary would be the ones sort of denying/approving Habeas Corpus rights, would they not? (or just tossin' em, as they do in countless state cases).

This person is/was a US citizen, so her case even weirder than the Gitmo detainees , who (correct me if I am mistaken) may have habeas rights, but not all the rights citizens have.

Jazzbumpa said...

It's 100% malfeasance by everyone involved.

I'm trying to track down the Blair statement that Roberts cites, re: killing citizens. I can't find anything that doesn't either refer back to him or use chunks of his post ver batim.

Can it be independently verified? I'm feeling skeptical

J said...

Siddiqui

Roberts could be skewing things a bit. Regardless, the evidence was scant. As with most trials, the testimony of goons (in this case, Army goons) was enough to convict her.

Guilty or not, she sounds traumatized, if not mentally unstable. Sad.

Jazzbumpa said...

I am very willing to believe that Siddiqui's trial was a travesty. It looks like an innocent person is essentially helpless in the clutches of what passes for our legal system.

My skepticism is about Blair saying:
it was now “defined policy” that the U.S. government can murder its own citizens on the sole basis of someone in the government’s judgment that an American is a threat.

If that were the case, he'd be an idiot to admit it in a public forum. And I expect it would be all over the media, and easy to find.

Strange.
JzB

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