Karachi:
Pakistani police on Friday used tear gas to disperse protesters who shouted "Death to America" in outrage after a US court jailed a woman scientist for 86 years for attempting to murder US officers.
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 mother of three's repatriation on humanitarian grounds.
A New York court found Aafia Siddiqui, the once brilliant scientist dubbed "Lady Qaeda" by the US tabloids, guilty of the attempted murder of US military officers in Afghanistan in 2008 -- five years after she disappeared.
In Karachi, Siddiqui'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 protesters shouted "Death to America," "Allahu akbar" (God is greater), "Free Aafia Siddiqui" and "Down with the US system of justice".
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. The protesters later dispersed peacefully.
Hundreds more took to the streets in Pakistan's second largest city of Lahore. Cricket hero-turned-politician Imran Khan led a rally to condemn the verdict as "unethical and inhuman," an AFP reporter said.