US verdict for Pakistani scientist sparks protests

A New York court has found Pakistan-born scientist Aafia Siddiqui guilty of trying to kill her American interrogators in Afghanistan in 2008.

A fierce critic of the US, Siddiqui has many supporters who say she was framed and tortured to provide false testimony.

This case was built upon what many consider to be very little evidence.

Prosecutors were not able to present experts who could show that there were fingerprints on the M4 rifle that they said Dr. Siddiqui took from US officials and attempted to shoot at them.

When her verdict made headlines, protesters took to the streets in Pakistan.

Her supporters say she was framed and made an example of. Further, they say she was traveling through Pakistan in 2003 with her three children when they disappeared.

She later appeared in 2008 when the alleged shooting attempt happened. It is not clear where she spent the five years in-between.

Two of Siddiqui's three children are reportedly still missing.

Aafia Siddiqui is not the only suspected extremist who has gone missing in Pakistan in the last 7 years.

And as Petra Bartosiewicz from the Nation magazine explains, Siddiqui has become “a symbol of all those who remain unaccounted for“.