A lawyer for Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist, has denounced extra security measures at a U.S. court requiring visitors at her trial to show identification and sign in even after passing through two check points.

The extra security check comes on top of a metal detector placed outside the doorway of the Manhattan courtroom on the 21st floor of the building where Aafia Siddiqui is on trial for attempted murder. That detector is in addition to the ones already on the ground floor.

“The suggestion is that the public gallery may be a threat,” said Charles Swift, one of the three leading lawyers retained by the Pakistan government to defend Ms. Siddiqui.

Grilling spectators, often in front of jurors waiting to get into the courtroom, “is highly prejudicial,” Swift told Federal Judge Richard Berman.

Swift spoke out just before the court adjourned on Thursday, the third day of the trial.

But Judge Berman said that he had no knowledge of the security steps being taken and would discuss with the relevant authorities on Friday.

Earlier, the day-long proceedings brought out two points clearly: The M-4 rife that Ms. Siddiqui is alleged to have grabbed to shoot at U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan did not have her fingerprints and that even the projectiles or casings of the two bullets fired from it were not found at the police outpost in Ghazni where the incident took place in July 2008. On the other hand, the American investigator found the casings and projectiles of the two bullets fired by the US military officer that hit and badly wounded Ms. Siddiqui.

However, the prosecution continued to insist that the shots were fired by Ms. Siddiqui.

FBI Special Agent Gordon Hurley, who was tasked with investigating the shooting incident, said he had dug through the area of the police outpost’s wall where two M-4 bullet had hit, but found no projectiles.

Source  : Nation.com.pk

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