Aafia is on trial in New York for the next several weeks. This blog will be following her trial.

NEW YORK — A Pakistani woman accused of trying to kill US servicemen at an Afghan police station was ordered out of a New York courtroom Tuesday after denouncing the start of her trial.

During one of several outbursts, Aafia Siddiqui, 37, appeared to refer to rumors that she had been held in a secret US prison in Afghanistan. She was then ordered to be removed from the courtroom.

Prosecutors described Siddiqui as a would-be terrorist who in July 2008 grabbed a US soldier's rifle at the Afghan police station where she was being interrogated and tried to slaughter a group of servicemen.

"The defendant picked up that assault rifle, saw agents and soldiers and tried to kill them," Assistant US Attorney Jenna Dabbs told a federal courtroom overflowing with journalists and supporters of Siddiqui.

Lawyers for the Karachi-born, US-educated defendant said there is no hard proof that she fired a shot.

"You're not going to have any physical evidence that it (the rifle) was fired," defense attorney Charles Swift told jurors.

Siddiqui, who supporters claim was held for years at the US base in Bagram, Afghanistan, repeatedly disrupted proceedings.

"This is not a fair court, this is something else," she said.

Told by the judge she had a right to leave the courtroom and listen from an adjacent cell via TV monitor, she replied: "I'm being forced."

Later she protested: "If you were in a secret prison... (where) your children were tortured." She was eventually escorted from the court.

A frail-looking woman educated at the prestigious MIT university in Massachusetts, Siddiqui featured on a 2004 US list of people suspected of Al-Qaeda links. She is also said to have married a relative of 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although this is disputed.

In addition, Siddiqui is alleged to have been carrying plans for attacks on the Statue of Liberty and other New York landmarks at the time of the incident in Afghanistan.

However, she has not been charged with terrorism and her trial is focusing on the attempted murder and assault allegations.

The trial has drawn widespread attention because it is the most advanced in a string of current cases being handled by US prosecutors in what is frequently referred to as the "war on terror."

Several other suspects in alleged bomb plots are working their way through the system, and Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, is also due to be tried in New York.

According to prosecutors, Siddiqui was arrested by Afghan police July 17, 2008, in the provincial city of Ghazni with notes on her referring to a "mass casualty attack" and target lists including New York's most famous landmarks.

The next day, while being held in the second floor of the local police building, she allegedly grabbed an M4 assault rifle belonging to one of several US servicemen and FBI agents who had come to interrogate her.

She opened fire, missed, and was shot by one of the US soldiers using a handgun, prosecutors allege.

They acknowledge there is little direct physical evidence. For example, there are no fingerprints on the M4 rifle, Dabbs said.

However, there are multiple witnesses, and "the one thing those Americans will never forget the moment they were convinced they were going to die," Dabbs told the jury.

Defense lawyers say all that is sure is that Siddiqui was shot -- she was brought to the United States shortly after the incident nursing a fresh bullet wound in her abdomen.

Swift cast doubt on whether there would have been time for Siddiqui to pick up the rifle and remove the safety catch, a maneuver for which "soldiers have to qualify repeatedly."

He also asked why there were no powder traces from the alleged M4 shots on a curtain in the immediate vicinity. "Does this make sense?" he asked.

Human rights groups say the biggest mystery about Siddiqui is her whereabouts during the five years prior to the alleged 2008 assault.

Siddiqui was living in Pakistan when she vanished in March 2003. This was at a time of intense efforts by US-backed Pakistani security forces to root out Al-Qaeda, and relatives believe she was grabbed in one of these operations.

Where she went then, nobody knows.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.