NEW YORK — A U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist convicted of trying to kill U.S. agents and military officers in Afghanistan was sentenced Thursday to 86 years in prison after she delivered a message of world peace and forgave the judge.
“I am a Muslim, but I love Americans too,” Aafia Siddiqui said during one of several rambling statements delivered at the behest of U.S. District Judge Richard Berman.
“Forgive everybody in my case, please,” she added. “Also forgive Judge Berman.”
During a three-hour hearing in federal court in Manhattan, Siddiqui, 38, claimed she had evidence Israel was behind the Sept. 11 attacks and warned more plots were in the works.
“I do not want any bloodshed. I do not want any misunderstanding. I really want to make peace and end the wars,” she said.
Siddiqui rolled her eyes, shook her head and threw up her hand in frustration as her lawyers tried to convince the judge she deserved leniency because she was mentally ill.
“I’m not paranoid,” she said at one point. “I don’t agree with that.”
News of the harsh sentence touched off protests in Pakistan. In the northwestern city of Peshawar, dozens of people took to the streets, burning tires and shouting “Down with America!” and slogans against Pakistani’s president and prime minister.
The sentence imposed on the mother of three capped a strange legal odyssey that began two summers ago, when Siddiqui turned up in Afghanistan carrying notes referencing a “mass-casualty attack” on New York City landmarks and a stash of sodium cyanide.
At trial earlier this year, jurors heard eyewitnesses describe how, after she was detained by Afghan police, Siddiqui grabbed a rifle and tried to shoot U.S. authorities who had gone to interrogate her. They said she yelled, “Death to Americans!” before she was injured in return fire and subdued.
