New York: Though it was not exactly like Kafka’s The Trial, there was still something nightmarish about this recent, and now infamous, trial. The assortment of people that thronged the courtroom of the US District Court in Manhattan contributed to this mood. One attendee was attired in robes and headgear that made him look like a caricature of Mohammed Bin Qasim. The latter, a young man, was held for a while and questioned after being accused of gesturing towards two jury members with his hands in the form of a gun. The two jury members asked the judge if they could be excused as they believed they could “no longer be fair” to the defendant, Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

At one point during the trial, when a prosecution witness stated before the jury that coalition forces in Afghanistan experience violence on a daily basis, a member of the courtroom audience applauded. Meanwhile, in the jury box, some of the carefully picked jurors yawned, seemingly sleepy, or bored. One of them chewed at his pen.

In the front row, an artist captured one of Aafia’s outbursts, forever immortalising her accusations of injustice: “I say you are lying!” she yelled at the judge. Her defence lawyers argued that Aafia suffers from mental illness and “diminshed capacity.” Prosecutors simply countered that she is a faker. Throughout it all, the judge provided repeated reminders to the jury, and everyone, that the defendant should be presumed innocent until found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Despite this, major newspapers in New York continued to call her “Lady Al-Qaeda” and the “terror mom.” On the other hand, it was clear that the Pakistani media sympathised with US-educated Aafia, a neuroscientist.

In the courtroom, most of the audience was made up of women. There were very few Pakistani men who came to observe the proceedings. One notable exception was Shahid Comrade, an executive member of the Pakistan-USA Freedom Forum. His dedicated presence was like something out of Lage Raho Munna Bhai. Be it sunshine, snow or storm, he was out on the street in front of the court building, waving signs campaigning for the release of Aafia Siddiqui.

“Why don’t you sit your over there, as there is a seat vacant,” a court officer told one of the bearded onlookers. “No. I can’t sit with a female,” came the response.

Besides those refusing to sit, there were others who did not care to rise when the judge ascended to the bench.

Many veiled women and bearded men made rows in the court hallways to offer their prayers. Besides the burqa-clad, a number of women in the audience wore fur and tall boots. On the first day, Cindy Sheehan, mother of an American soldier who died in Iraq and a woman now famous in the US as an anti-war activist, also came to lead the congregants to the courtroom. Those included in the audience: Mohammed Siddiqui, the architect brother of Aafia Siddiqui; the parents of Fahad Hashmi, a student of Pakistani origin who was arrested in Britain and extradited to the US awaiting his terrorism-related trial in New York; a mother of a Bangladeshi youth held without trial in Atlanta, Georgia; hijab-wearing Connie Nash (who says she dons the hijab as a token of respect to Muslims) who is writing a book on the secret rendition prisons of the US; a freelance journalist who travelled across Pakistan to do a story for Harper’s Magazine on Aafia — the journalist wasn’t concerned that the court wouldn’t issue her in-house credentials and was more worried about the hardship the Pakistani media was facing in gaining access to Aafia’s trial; and Tina Foster, a lawyer and the spokesperson for Aafia Siddiqui’s family, who fought against the US government over the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base.

Treatment meted out by court officers to those who came to cover and observe Aafia’s trial was akin to that in a police state. Despite all odds, though, the audience gathered from all across America: Connie Nash arrived from North Carolina. To the left and right, commies and neo-cons sat with all sorts of Amars, Akbars and Anthonys under one roof. In this motley group was Pakistani Ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani, who, when he attended in late January, was offered a special chair in the public gallery and greetings by US District Judge Richard Berman.

Pakistan’s present government paid two million dollars to three lawyers hired to defend Dr Aafia Siddiqui, while reportedly hundreds of other Pakistanis languish in America’s jails and in jails outside the US. But then again, Pakistan ostensibly has a role in the latter, too, as hundreds of Pakistanis have gone missing from within its own borders.