Countdown has begun

December 17 is the date when the ceremony of a hearing for determining the mental ability of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to stand a trial will be performed. That is the day when the US legal system will be tested in the eyes of the most optimistic observers. For others, it has already been tested and found wanting.

Injustices which have been carried out since Aafia first appeared in a US court have been listed in Don't Blame the Victim, an analytical report published online by People's Resistence, a rights group in Pakistan:

Following incidents which can be seen as injustice or malpractice have occurred after August 6, when Aafia was first presented in New York:

• Victim was remanded on implausible charges
• Bail was not even sought by her lawyers
• US envoy gave a questionable statement about victim’s children
• It’s possible that the victim’s eldest son was brainwashed before being handed over by Afghan authorities
• Motion to establish the victim as mentally unfit to stand trial, if accepted, will disqualify her from giving evidence later against her abusers
• At Carswell, the victim can be at risk of being brainwashed or rendered incapable of providing evidence
• Two children of the victim are still missing. If they are still alive then it is possible that they are being used as hostages to pressurize her.
• Allegations of her illegal detention, rape, etc, and the abduction of her children, are going unaddressed.

It seems that rather than the US legal system it is the collective conscience of the ordinary cictizens of America that is at test here. To say the least, if such a case had come up in Pakistan, the human rights groups as well as ordinary liberals and progressives there would have been far more active, and perhaps effective, than their counterparts in the US have been.