Federal prosecutors are opposing the request of defense lawyers that a judge block Aafia Siddiqui from taking the witness stand in her own defense. In a letter submitted today to Southern District Judge Richard Berman, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christopher L. LaVigne, David Rody and Jenna M. Dabbs say Ms. Siddiqui, “has a fundamental constitutional right to testify in her own defense, and the law does not permit her counsel to restrict that right in contravention of the defendant’s wishes.”
Ms. Siddiqui, a Pakistani who is accused of the attempted murder of FBI agents and U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan in 2008, has repeatedly disrupted her trial and has been removed from the courtroom several times. Her lawyers say she suffers from diminished capacity and would likely harm her own interests and turn the trial into a “spectacle” if allowed to testify (NYLJ, Jan. 27). But the prosecutors, who asked the judge to remove Ms. Siddiqui completely from the trial, say in their letter that her most recent outbursts “are neither irrational nor delusional, as the defense suggest, but are instead opportunistic and calculated.”
