Karachi: Pakistani activists poured into the streets yesterday shouting "Death to America" and burning effigies of US President Barack Obama after a US court jailed a woman scientist for 86 years.
In a case that has been condemned across the nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 167 million, the government said it would petition Washington to secure the repatriation of the mother of three on humanitarian grounds.
A New York court found Aafia Seddiqi, the once brilliant scientist dubbed "Lady Qaida" by the US tabloids, guilty of the attempted murder of US military officers in Afghanistan in 2008 — five years after she disappeared.
In Karachi, Seddiqi's home town and Pakistan's largest city, police fired tear gas shells to prevent scores of people from marching on the US consulate at the behest of the youth wing of Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). The protestors shouted "Death to America", "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), "Free Aafia Seddiqi" and "Down with the US system of justice".
Anti-riot police
Hundreds of anti-riot police deployed on the main Shahra-e-Faisal road to stop protesters from marching towards the US mission.Police official Javed Akbar Qazi said police arrested at least 14 people for creating a disturbance.
At a small protest outside the Karachi press club, JI activists burnt a crudely made Obama effigy, condemning US policies as anti-Muslim.
