Jury selection in the “Lady Al Qaeda” trial got off to a bizarre start Wednesday with the accused terrorist telling jurors she was “boycotting” – and demanding Jews be excluded from the panel.
“If they have a Zionist or Israeli background…they are all mad at me,” said Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained neuroscientist charged with attempted murder.
“I have a feeling everyone here is them – subject to genetic testing….They should be excluded if you want to be fair,” she told Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Berman.
Prospective jurors weren’t present for that outburst, but they were in the courtroom to hear her say, “I’m boycotting the trial…there are too many injustices.”
At another point, Siddiqui repeatedly refused to talk to her own lawyers, saying she didn’t trust them.
“I don’t trust you either,” she told Berman.
She even tried to toss a handwritten note to prosecutors requesting time each day to pray. Berman said time would be set aside.
Siddiqui, 37, is accused of picking up an M-4 Army rifle and firing two rounds at a team of Americans who tried to question her in Afghanistan on July 18, 2008.
Prosecutors argue she screamed, “Allah Akbar” and vowed to kill Americans before she was wrestled to the ground. She allegedly had two pounds of poisonous sodium cyanide and hundreds of pages of notes and documents on how to build chemical and biological weapons.
The terror guides featured targets including the Statue of Liberty , Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge , prosecutors said.
Berman ruled the jury can hear about the target list and other handwritten notes but tossed as evidence the chemicals and mass-produced documents from “how-to” terror manuals.
Prosecutors also are barred from bringing up Siddiqui’s alleged ties or sympathies with Al Qaeda because they would create a bias.
Repeat. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot! Not to be outdone in day one of jury selection, Siddiqui was booted on day two.
A jury was chosen Thursday in the “Lady Al Qaeda” trial – but not before the defendant interrupted the process with more outbursts and was tossed from the courtroom.
Meanwhile, as Berman quizzed the jury pool on whether their 9/11 experiences would influence their deliberations, Siddiqui piped up from the defense table.
“The next question will be on anti-Semitism, Israel was behind 9/11. That’s not anti-Semitic,” she said before being escorted out.
Berman later said that anyone who disrupts proceedings will be removed, but that Siddiqui has a right to be present for her trial and would be allowed to return.
Oh yeah. This is the same woman for whom U.S. Muslims raised more than $7o,000 in defense funds, and whom the Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. has been trying to have repatriated.