For more than a year, Southern District of New York Judge Richard Berman has walked a fine line between maintaining order and allowing Aafia Siddiqui to stay in the courtroom despite her repeated outbursts — even though prosecutors and her own lawyers wanted her excluded.
Tuesday morning, however, Berman ordered the Pakistani-born Siddiqui removed after she rose and shouted, “You’re lying!” at the government’s first witness in her trial for allegedly grabbing a rifle and attempting to shoot U.S. military and FBI agents in an Afghani police compound in 2008.