Many of us are still in a state of shock over the guilty verdict returned on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

The response from the people of Pakistan was predictable and overwhelming, and I salute their spontaneous actions.
From Peshawar to Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, and beyond, they marched in their thousands demanding the return of Aafia.
Even some of the U.S. media oultlets expressed discomfort over the verdict returned by the jurors… there was a general feeling that something was not right.
Everyone had something to say, everyone that is except the usually verbose U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson, who has spent the last two years delivering briefing against Dr. Aafia and her supporters.
This is the same woman who claimed I was a fantasist when I gave a press conference with Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Imran Khan back in July 2008 revealing the plight of a female prisoner in Bagram called the Grey Lady.
She said I was talking nonsense and stated categorically that the prisoner I referred to as “650” did not exist.
By the end of the month, she changed her story and said there had been a female prisoner but that she was most definitely not Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.
By that time, Aafia had been shot at virtually point blank range in an Afghan prison cell jammed full of more than a dozen U.S. soldiers, FBI agents, and Afghan police.
Her Excellency briefed the media that the prisoner had wrested an M-4 rifle from one soldier and fired off two rounds and had to be subdued. The fact that these bullets failed to hit a single person in the cell and simply disappeared did not resonate with the diplomat.
On August 16, 2008, in a letter dripping with untruths, she decried the “erroneous and irresponsible media reports regarding the arrest of Ms. Aafia Siddiqui.” She went on to say: “Unfortunately, there are some who have an interest in simply distorting the facts in an effort to manipulate and inflame public opinion. The truth is never served by sensationalism…”
When Jamaat-e Islami invited me on a national tour of Pakistan to address people about the continued abuse of Dr. Aafia and the truth about her incarceration in Bagram, the U.S. ambassador continued to issue rebuttals.
She assured us all that Dr. Aafia was being treated humanely had been given consular access as set out in international law… hmm. Well I have a challenge for Ms. Patterson today. I challenge her to repeat every single word she said back then and swear it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
As Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s trial got under way, the US ambassador and some of her stooges from the intelligence world laid on a lavish party at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad for some hand-picked journalists where I’ve no doubt in between the dancing, drinks, and music they were carefully briefed about the so-called facts of the case.
It is interesting that some of the potentially incriminating pictures taken at the private party managed to find the ambassador was probably hoping to minimize the impact the trial would have on the streets of Pakistan proving that, for the years she has been holed up and barricaded behind concrete bunkers and barbed wire, she has learned nothing about this great country of Pakistan or its people.
One astute Pakistani columnist wrote about her: “The respected lady seems to have forgotten the words of her own country’s 16th president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865): ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.’”
And the people of Pakistan proved they are nobody’s fools and responded to the guilty verdict in New York in an appropriate way.
When injustice is the law, it is the duty of everyone to rise up and challenge that injustice in any way possible.
The response -- so far -- has been restrained and measured, but it is just the start. The sentence will not be delivered by Judge Richard Berman until May.
Of course, there has been a great deal of finger-pointing and blame toward the jury in New York who found Dr. Aafia guilty of attempted murder.
Observers asked how they could ignore the science and the irrefutable facts… there was absolutely no evidence linking Dr. Aafia to the gun, no bullets, no residue from firing it.
But I really don’t think we can blame the jurors for the verdict -- you see the jury simply could not handle the truth. Had they taken the logical route and gone for the science and the hard, cold, clinical facts, it would have meant two things. It would have meant around eight U.S. soldiers took the oath and lied in court to save their own skins and careers, or it would have meant that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was telling the truth.
And, as I said before, the jury couldn’t handle the truth. Because that would have meant that the defendant really had been kidnapped, abused, tortured, and held in dark, secret prisons by the U.S. before being shot and put on a rendition flight to New York. It would have meant that her three children -- two of them US citizens -- would have also been kidnapped, abused, and tortured by the U.S.
They say ignorance is bliss, and this jury so desperately wanted not to believe that the U.S. could have had a hand in the kidnapping of a five-month-old baby boy, a five-year-old girl, and her seven-year-old brother.
They couldn’t handle the truth… it is as simple as that.
Well I, and many others across the world like me, can’t handle any more lies. America’s reputation is lying in the lowest gutters in Pakistan at the moment and it can’t sink any lower.
The trust has gone, there is only a burning hatred and resentment toward a superpower which sends unmanned drones into villages to slaughter innocents.
It is fair to say that America’s goodwill and credibility is all but washed up with most honest, decent citizens of Pakistan.
And I think even Her Excellency Anne Patterson recognizes that fact, which is why she is now keeping her mouth shut.
If she has any integrity and any self-respect left, she should stand before the Pakistani people and ask for their forgiveness for the drone murders, the extrajudicial killings, the black operations, the kidnapping, torture, and rendition of their citizens, the water-boarding, the bribery, the corruption, and not least of all, the injustice handed out to Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and her family.
She should then pick up the phone to call the U.S. president and tell him to release Aafia and return Pakistan’s most loved, respected, and famous daughter and reunite her with the two children who are still missing.
Then she should reread her letter of August 16, 2008 and write another… one of resignation.
Yvonne Ridley is a patron of Cageprisoners, which first brought the plight of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui to the world’s attention shortly after her kidnap in March 2003. The award-winning, investigative journalist also co-produced the documentary “In Search of Prisoner 650” with filmmaker Hassan al Banna Ghani, which concluded that the Grey Lady of Bagram was Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.