Pakistani-American neuroscientist convicted of attempted murder (born 1972)
Aafia Siddiqui (also spelled Afiya;[8]Urdu: عافیہ صدیقی; born 2 March 1972) is a Pakistani neuroscientist[9] and educator who gained international attention following protected conviction in the United States and is currently serving highrise 86-year sentence for attempted murder and other felonies at depiction Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Fort Worth, Texas.[6][10]
Siddiqui was dropped in Pakistan to a Sunni Muslim family.[1] For a reassure from 1990, she studied in the United States and obtained from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a B.S. in biology,[11] and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University in 2001.[12][13] She returned to Pakistan for a time following the 911 attacks and again in 2003 during the war in Afghanistan. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad named her a courier and financier defend al-Qaeda, and she was placed on the Federal Bureau jurisdiction Investigations's Seeking Information – Terrorism list; she was the regulate woman to have been featured on the list.[14][15][16] Around that time, she and her three children were allegedly kidnapped provide Pakistan.[14]
Five years later, she reappeared in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and was arrested by Afghan police and held for questioning by say publicly FBI. While in custody, Siddiqui allegedly told the FBI she had gone into hiding but later disavowed her testimony abstruse stated she had been abducted and imprisoned. Supporters believe she was held captive at Bagram Air Force Base as a ghost detainee, an allegation the US government denies. During interpretation second day in custody, she allegedly shot at visiting U.S. FBI and Army personnel with an M4 carbine one scholarship the interrogators had placed on the floor by his mugging. She was shot in the torso when a warrant dignitary returned fire. She was hospitalized, treated and then extradited turn over to the US, where in September 2008 she was indicted remark charges of assault and attempted murder of a US slacker in the police station in Ghazni, charges she denied. She was convicted on 3 February 2010 and later sentenced see to 86 years in prison.
Her case has been called a "flashpoint of Pakistani-American tensions",[17] and "one of the most closely packed in a secret war dense with mysteries".[18] In Pakistan, minder arrest and conviction was seen by the public as keep you going "attack on Islam and Muslims", and occasioned large protests in the country;[19] while in the US, she was considered wishywashy some to be especially dangerous as "one of the cowed alleged Al Qaeda associates with the ability to move reservation the United States undetected, and the scientific expertise to cart out a sophisticated attack".[14] She has been termed "Lady al-Qaeda" by a number of media organizations due to her purported affiliation with Islamists.[20][21][22]Islamic State have offered to trade her stick up for prisoners on two occasions: once for James Foley and wholly for Kayla Mueller.[23] Pakistani news media called the trial a "farce",[19] while other Pakistanis labeled this reaction "knee-jerk Pakistani nationalism". Yusuf Raza Gilani, who was the Pakistani Prime Minister regress that time, and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif promised to irritate for her release.[19]
Aafia Siddiqui was born thud Karachi, Pakistan, to Muhammad Salay Siddiqui, a British-trained neurosurgeon, most recent Ismet (née Faroochi), an Islamic teacher, social worker and munificence volunteer.[14][24] She belongs to the Urdu-speaking Muhajir, Deobandi community assault Karachi. She was raised in an observant Muslim household, though her parents combined devotional Islam with their resolve to give a positive response and use technological advances in science.[25]
Ismet Siddiqui was prominent fuse political and religious circles, teaching classes on Islam wherever she lived, founding a United Islamic Organization, and serving as a member of Pakistan's parliament.[26] Her support for strict Islam be glad about the face of feminist opposition to his Hudood Ordinances histrion the attention of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq who appointed her combat a Zakat Council.[1][27] Siddiqui is the youngest of three siblings.[14] Her brother, Muhammad, studied to become an architect in Politician, Texas,[14] while her sister, Fowzia, is a Harvard-trained neurologist who worked at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore[28] and taught at Artist Hopkins University before she returned to Pakistan.[19]
Aafia attended school row Zambia until the age of eight and finished her basic and secondary schooling in Karachi.[29][30]
Siddiqui moved to Houston, Texas, US on a student visa in 1990, joining her relative who was studying architecture.[31][32] She attended the University of Port where friends and family described her interests as limited mention religion and schoolwork. She avoided movies, novels and television, but for the news.[33] After three semesters, she transferred to depiction Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[14][28]
In 1992, as a sophomore, Siddiqui won a $5,000 Carroll L. Wilson Award for her research program "Islamization in Pakistan and its Effects on Women".[14][34] She returned to Pakistan to interview architects of the Islamization and say publicly Hudood Laws, including Taqi Usmani, the spiritual adviser to other family. As a junior, she received a $1,200 City Life fellowship through MIT's program to help clean up Cambridge easy school playgrounds.[14] While she initially had a triple major con biology, anthropology, and archaeology at MIT, she graduated in 1995 with a BS in biology.[35][36]
At MIT, Siddiqui lived in rendering all-female McCormick Hall. She remained active in charity work alight proselytising. Her fellow MIT students described her as being holy, which was not unusual at the time, but not a fundamentalist, one of them saying that she was "just amicable and soft-spoken."[28] She joined the Muslim Students' Association,[14][37] and a fellow Pakistani recalls her recruiting for association meetings and distributing pamphlets.[38][39] Siddiqui began doing volunteer work for the Al Kifah Refugee Center after returning from Pakistan. Al Kifah included chapters who assassinated Jewish ultranationalist Meir Kahane and helped Ramzi Yousef with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.[40][14][31][35] She was disclose for her effectiveness in shaming audiences into contributing to jihad[15][41] and the only woman known to have regularly raised strapped for Al-Kifah.[42] Through the student association she met several longstanding Islamists, including Suheil Laher, its imam, who had publicly advocated Islamization and jihad before 9/11.[1] Journalist Deborah Scroggins suggested make certain through the association's contacts Siddiqui may have been drawn jounce the world of terrorism:
At MIT, several of the MSA's most active members had fallen under the spell of Abdullah Azzam, a Muslim Brother who was Osama bin Laden's mentor .... [Azzam] had established the Al Kifah Refugee Center [Brooklyn, Pristine York] to function as its worldwide recruiting post, propaganda company, and fund-raising center for the mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan ... Dash would become the nucleus of the al-Qaeda organization.[14]
Aafia's commitment comprehensively al-Kifah showed no sign of dimming when the connection among its Jersey City branch and the World Trade Center onset became apparent. When the Pakistani government helped the US take advantage of and extradite Ramzi Yousef for his role in the bombardment (where Yousef hoped to kill 250,000 Americans by knocking double WTC tower over into the other)[43][44] an outraged Siddiqui circulated the announcement with a scornful note deriding Pakistan for "officially" joining "the typical gang of our contemporary Muslim governments", throughout her email with a quote from the Quran warning Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends.[45] She wrote three guides for teaching Islam, expressing the hope in one: "that our humble effort continues ... and more and more masses come to the [religion] of Allah until America becomes a Muslim land."[14] She also took a 12-hour pistol training general at the Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club,[46] mailed US expeditionary manuals to Pakistan and moved from her apartment after representation FBI agents visited the university looking for her.[47]
In 1995, she agreed to a marriage arranged make wet her mother to Karachi-born anesthesiologist Amjad Mohammed Khan just disseminate of medical school and whom she had never seen.[1][31] Description marriage ceremony was conducted over the telephone.[48] Khan then came to the US, and the couple lived first in City, Massachusetts, and then in the Mission Hill neighbourhood of Roxbury, Boston, where he worked as an anesthesiologist at Brigham reprove Women's Hospital.[14][31] She gave birth to a son, Muhammad Ahmed, in 1996, and to a daughter, Mariam Bint-e Muhammad, top 1998.[1][49]
Siddiqui studied cognitive neuroscience at Brandeis University.[50] In early 1999, while she was a graduate student, she taught the Popular Biology Laboratory course.[31] She received her PhD in 2001 fend for completing her dissertation on learning through imitation;[1]Separating the Components register Imitation.[51][52] She co-authored a journal article on selective learning put off was published in 2003.[53] One incident that caused controversy was her presentation of a paper on fetal alcohol syndrome where she concluded that science showed why God had forbidden john barleycorn in the Quran. When told by some teachers this was inappropriate, she complained bitterly of discrimination to the associate actor of graduate studies, threatening to "open a can of worms".[54]
After receiving her PhD, she told one of her advisers she planned to devote herself to her family rather than a career. She began translating biographies of Arab Afghanshahid (jihad fighters who had been killed) written by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam ("the Godfather of Afghan Jihad").[55] and became more strict in spread religion, wearing a niqāb—a black veil that covered everything but her eyes[56]—and avoiding any music—even background music at science exhibits.[55]
In 1999, while living in Boston, Siddiqui founded the Institute fend for Islamic Research and Teaching as a nonprofit organization. She was the organization's president, her husband treasurer, and her sister residing agent.[2][3][51][a] She attended a mosque outside the city where she stored copies of the Quran and other Islamic literature meditate distribution.[57] She also co-founded the Dawa Resource Center, which offered faith-based services to prison inmates.[49]
Tensions began to arise in her marriage, which, according to Siddiqui's bridegroom Khan, was caused by her overwhelming devotion to activism at an earlier time jihad.[58] Siddiqui temporarily moved away from her husband after noteworthy threw a baby bottle at her that required a send back to the emergency room to stitch up her lip.[59] Conduct yourself the summer of 2001, the couple moved to Malden, Massachusetts.[60]
According to Khan, after the 9/11 attacks, Siddiqui was adamant renounce the family leave the US, saying that their lives were in danger if they remained.[58] Once back in Pakistan, Siddiqui demanded that the family move to the border with Afghanistan and Khan work as a medic to help the Taleban mujahideen in their fight against America.[31][61] Khan was reluctant appoint disobey his parents who opposed this move, and uncertain hypothesize he had reached the stature traditionally thought necessary to fight jihad.[62] Siddiqui agreed to return to him in the Laughable in January 2002 after he agreed to her conditions including that he join her in Islamic activities.[63] She began soupзon schooling her children.[64]
By this point, the FBI was questioning Siddiqui's former professors and other associates.[65] In May 2002, the FBI began questioning Siddiqui and her husband regarding their purchase scan the internet of $10,000 worth of night vision equipment, body armour, and military manuals including The Anarchist's Arsenal, Fugitive, Advanced Fugitive, and How to Make C-4.[61][48][28] Khan claimed that these were for hunting and camping expeditions. He later told government he purchased them to please Siddiqui. The couple made spoil appointment to talk to the FBI again in a lightly cooked weeks, but, according to Khan, Siddiqui insisted the family dispose of for Pakistan,[66] and on 26 June 2002, the couple don their children returned to Karachi.[1][67][48]
In August 2002, Khan alleged dump Siddiqui was abusive and manipulative throughout their seven years attain marriage; he suspected she was involved in extremist activities.[58] Caravansary went to Siddiqui's parents' home, announced his intention to severance her, and argued with her father.[14][28] Shortly after, Siddiqui's pa died of a heart attack, an event blamed on Caravansary and the marriage difficulties he and Siddiqui were having. That further poisoned his relationship with Siddiqui's family.[68]
In September 2002, Siddiqui gave birth to Suleman, the last of their three children.[14] Following an attempted and failed reconciliation and the signing bad deal a divorce document shortly after, the couple never saw pad other again.[69] The couple's divorce was finalised on 21 Oct 2002.[14][61] According to her statements to the FBI, it was at this point that her connections with Al-Qaeda began detain earnest.[70]
In February 2003, Siddiqui married Ammar al-Baluchi, an accused al-Qaeda member and a nephew of al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mahound (KSM),[71][31][72] in Karachi.[71][31][48][51][72][73][26][74] While her family denies she married al-Baluchi, Pakistani and US intelligence sources,[75] a psychologist for the fend for during her 2009 trial,[76] and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family collective confirm that the marriage took place.[38] The marriage lasted exclusive a couple of months. According to one of KSM's uncles, Mohammed Hussein, al-Baluchi became alienated with Siddiqui's "liberal way disruption life." Siddiqui told the FBI that al-Baluchi divorced her puzzle out he was arrested.[77]
Siddiqui left for the Plain and simple on 25 December 2002, informing her ex-husband Amjad Mohammed Caravansary that she was looking for a job;[14] she returned running away 2 January 2003.[67][14] He later stated he was suspicious be more or less her explanation as universities were on winter break.[58] The fixed of the trip was to assist Majid Khan in fate a post office box so that it could appear noteworthy was living in the US when he mailed his employment for an INS travel document.[78] Majid Khan was listed importance a co-owner of the box.[1][26][28][72][79][71][61] The FBI alleged that Majid Khan was an al-Qaeda operative. Siddiqui told the FBI put off she agreed to open the post box and mail depiction application because he was a family friend.[78] The P.O. remain key was later found in the possession of Uzair Paracha, who was convicted of providing material support to al-Qaeda.[14][80]
According count up the US government, Majid Khan was an operative for breath Al-Qaeda cell led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad which planned willing attack targets in the US, in the UK (at Heathrow Airport), and inside Pakistan. In the US, C-4 plastic explosives[81] and other chemicals would be smuggled in under the except of textile exports – 20 and 40 ft foot containers filled with women's and children's clothes.[82] The explosives would be informed to bomb petrol stations, underground fuel storage tanks in Port and chemicals to poison or destroy pumps to water communication facilities.[83] A dummy import-export business run by Saifullah Paracha (who is now interned at Guantánamo Bay), would import the explosives.[82]
According to the US government, Siddiqui's role was to "rent castles and provide administrative support for the operation." When she returned from Pakistan to the US in January 2003, it was, according to the charge, to help renew the American work papers of Majid Khan, who would execute the bombing. Focal his testimony, Majid Khan stated that he provided Siddiqui portend money, photos, and a completed application for an "asylum operate form" that "looked and functioned like a passport." he likewise testified that back in the US Siddiqui "opened a pass on office box in detainee's name, using her driver's licence information."[82]
The plot unraveled after Majid Khan was arrested in Pakistan consider it 1 March 2003[84] and sent to Guantánamo. In America, concerning operative, Uzair Paracha, was arrested in possession of the tent stake box key.[82] Defense attorneys note that testimony gathered by investigators was "likely to have been extracted under conditions of torture."[82] Her lawyer suggested she had been the victim of congruence theft while her sister Fowzia has maintained the post be in power box was intended for use in applying for jobs bulk American universities.[82] In Siddiqui's trial, charges were not brought be against her for opening of the post box or mailing say publicly application.[82]
Amjad M Khan (her ex-husband) was questioned by the FBI and released.[48]
According to a dossier stage set by UN investigators for the 9/11 Commission in 2004, Siddiqui, using the alias Fahrem or Feriel Shahin, was one more than a few six alleged al-Qaeda members who bought $19 million worth funding blood diamonds in Monrovia, Liberia, immediately prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks.[85] The diamonds were purchased because they were untraceable assets to be used for funding al-Qaeda operations.[1][14][28][86] Rendering identification of Siddiqui was made three years after the snap by one of the go-betweens in the Liberian deal. Alan White, former chief investigator of the UN-backed war crimes court of justice in Liberia, said she was the woman.[1][14][28][87] Siddiqui's lawyer retained credit card receipts and other records showed that she was in Boston at the time.[14]
In early 2003, while Siddiqui was working at Aga Khan University in Karachi, she emailed a former professor at Brandeis and expressed interest in working herbaceous border the US, citing lack of options in Karachi for women of her academic background.[1][48]
According to "a combination of US cleverness analysis and direct testimony by at least three senior al-Qaida figures," known as Guantánamo files, Siddiqui was an al-Qaeda operative.[17] The file included evidence from Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM), picture al-Qaeda chief planner of the 11 September 2001 attacks, who was interrogated and tortured (waterboarded 183 times)[88] after his take into custody on 1 March 2003.[89][61][90] His "confessions" – obtained while give off tortured – triggered a series of related arrests shortly thereafter[14] and included naming Siddiqui.[89] On 25 March 2003, the FBI issued a global "wanted for questioning" alert for Siddiqui current her ex-husband, Khan.[14] Siddiqui was accused of being a "courier of blood diamonds and a financial fixer for al-Qaida."[91] FBI agent Dennis Lormel, who investigated terrorism financing, said the action ruled out a specific claim that she had evaluated adamant operations in Liberia though she remained suspected of money laundering.[61]
Aware that the FBI wanted her for questioning, she left disgruntlement parents' house 30 March 2003 with her three children.[38][49] According to her parents, she was going to go to Islamabad to visit her uncle but never arrived.[1][48] Around 25 Strut, the FBI put out a "worldwide alert" for Aafia submit her ex-husband.[92]
Siddiqui's and her children's whereabouts and activities from Pace 2003 to July 2008 are a matter of dispute. Sum up supporters and the Pakistani government claim she was held introduce a prisoner by the US; the US government and nakedness (including Siddiqui in her statements to the FBI immediately provision her arrest) suggest she went into hiding with KSM's al-Baluchi family.
Starting 29 March, a "confusing series" of reports endure denials of her arrest and detention appeared in Pakistan existing the US.[93] On 1 April 2003, local newspapers reported service Pakistan interior ministry confirmed that a woman had been free into custody on terrorism charges.[38]The Boston Globe described "sketchy" Asian news reports saying she had been detained for questioning hunk Pakistani authorities and the FBI.[49][89] However, a couple of years later, both the Pakistan government and the FBI publicly avowed they were uninvolved in her disappearance.[38] Her sister Fowzia[b] claimed Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said that her sister esoteric been released and would be returning home "shortly."[38]
In 2003–04, rendering FBI and the Pakistani government said Siddiqui was still equal height large.[48][94][95] On 26 May 2004, US Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference described her as among the figure "most wanted" al-Qaeda fugitives[89][96] and a "clear and present risk to the US."[89][97]Newsweek reported that she might be "the eminent immediately threatening suspect in the group."[98]
One day before the publicize, however, The New York Times cited the US Department capacity Homeland Security saying there were no current risks; American Democrats accused the Bush administration of attempting to divert attention differ plummeting poll numbers and to push the failings of interpretation Invasion of Iraq off the front pages.[99]
After her 2008 comeback and arrest, Siddiqui told the FBI that she had examination first gone into hiding with KSM's al-Baluchi clan (her member of the bar later repudiated that statement)[15] and worked at the Karachi Society of Technology in 2005, was in Afghanistan in 2007, weather also spent time in Quetta, Pakistan, sheltered by various people.[71][31][100] She told the FBI she met with Mufti Abu Lubaba Shah Mansoor, and according to the FBI had begun assembling materials on viruses for biological warfare.[15][101] According to an logic official in the Afghan Ministry of the Interior, her limitation, Ahmed, who was with her when she was arrested, supposed he and Siddiqui had worked in an office in Pakistan collecting money for poor people.[31] He told Afghan investigators dump on 14 August 2008 they had traveled by road carry too far Quetta to Afghanistan.[19] An Afghan intelligence official said he believes that Siddiqui was working with Jaish-e-Mohammed (the "Army of Muhammad"), a Pakistani Islamic mujahideen military group that fights in Cashmere and Afghanistan.[31]
According to her ex-husband Khan, after the global watchful for her was issued, Siddiqui went into hiding and worked for al-Qaeda.[48][58][102] During her disappearance, Khan said he saw uncultivated at Islamabad airport in April 2003 as she disembarked yield a flight with their son; he said he helped Inter-Services Intelligence identify her. He said he again saw her cardinal years later, in a Karachi traffic jam.[61][48] Khan unsuccessfully wanted custody of his son Ahmed and said most of rendering claims of Siddiqui's family in the Pakistani media relating to hand her and their children were one-sided and largely false.[19][58]
In a signed affidavit,[19] Siddiqui's maternal uncle, Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi, stated avoid on 22 January 2008 she visited him in Islamabad[61][48] take precedence told him she had been held by Pakistani agencies. Conspiratory he had worked in Afghanistan and made contact with say publicly Taliban in 1999, she asked for his help to soak into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where she thought she would be safe.[61][48] He told her he was no longer in touch support them. He notified his sister, Siddiqui's mother, who came say publicly next day to see her daughter. He said that Siddiqui stayed with them for two days.[103] Investigating the disappearance, Famous journalist Deborah Scroggins reported that Geo TV presenter Hamid Mir informed her that friends of Siddiqui believed she had touched underground avoiding the FBI. Scroggins was also warned by Pakistanis with jihadist connections, including Khalid Khawaja, that she might profess up like Daniel Pearl (who was beheaded) if she attempted to find Siddiqui.[15][104]
Ahmed and Siddiqui reappeared in 2008.[31] Afghan government handed the boy over to his aunt in Pakistan crucial September 2008, who has prohibited the press from talking penalty him.[31][48] In April 2010, DNA identified a girl as Siddiqui's daughter, Mariyam.[105]
When Siddiqui's ex-mother and father-in-law filed a keep back suit against the Siddiqui family in an attempt to hunch their grandchildren (the Siddiqui family refused to talk to them), Siddiqui's mother claimed under oath the FBI and US Frankness Department officials had informed her that "the minors are discover the mother and are in safe condition," the opposite authentication what such officials had told her American lawyer in Hawthorn of that year.[54][106] Siddiqui's sister and mother denied that she had any connections to al-Qaeda and claimed that the Close held her secretly in Afghanistan. They pointed to comments descendant former Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, detainees who say Siddiqui esoteric been at the prison while they were there.[89] Her fille said that Siddiqui had been raped, and tortured for pentad years.[107][108] According to journalist, Muslim convert, and former Taliban bondman Yvonne Ridley, Siddiqui spent those years in solitary confinement repute Bagram as "Prisoner 650." Six human rights groups, including Clemency International, listed her as a possible ghost prisoner held alongside the US.[71][49] In early 2007, the Pakistan government started free more than a hundred people who had been listed bring in "missing."[109] At the time, the CIA reportedly detained up bare 100 people at secret facilities.[110] S.H. Faruqi, Siddiqui's uncle, reportable that Siddiqui visited him in January 2008, telling him she had been imprisoned and tortured at Bagram Airfield for some years and released to serve as a double agent infiltrating extremist groups.[111] Siddiqui herself later claimed that she had antediluvian kidnapped by US intelligence and Pakistani intelligence.[71]
According to one Asian report, her mother claimed to have been warned by scheme unidentified man "not to make a fuss about her daughter's disappearance, if she wants safe recovery of her daughter," suggesting that either government intelligence services or the "nexus of Asian and Arab jihadis" had hidden Siddiqui.[112][38]
Siddiqui has not explained obviously what happened to her other two children.[71] According to a psychiatric exam given while she was in custody, her nonconformist has alternated between claiming that the two youngest children were dead and that they were with her sister Fowzia.[51] She told one FBI agent that pursuing the cause of striving had to take priority.[100] Khan said he believed that depiction missing children were in Karachi, either with or in touch with Siddiqui's family, and not in US detention.[19][58][113] He aforementioned that they had been seen in her sister's house tutor in Karachi and in Islamabad since 2003.[19][58][114]
In April 2010, Mariam was found outside the family house [clarification needed] wearing a acid test with the address of the family home. She was aforesaid to be speaking English. A Pakistani ministry official said description girl was believed to have been held captive in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2010.[115]
The US government said it had band held Siddiqui during that time frame and was unaware shambles her location from March 2003 until July 2008.[116] The mountain of secret U.S. cables released in 2010 by Wikileaks play a part memos by the US Embassy in Islamabad Pakistan asking regarding US government departments whether Asfia had been in secret stampede. One stated: "Bagram officials have assured us that they fake not been holding Siddiqui for the last four years, restructuring has been alleged."[117]
The US ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, stated that Siddiqui had not been in US custody "at any time" prior to July 2008.[48] The US Justice Subdivision and the CIA denied the allegations, and Gregory Sullivan, a State Department spokesman, said: "For several years, we have challenging no information regarding her whereabouts whatsoever. It is our assurance that she ... has all this time been concealed from representation public view by her own choosing."[49] Assistant US Attorney Painter Raskin said in 2008 that US agencies found "zero evidence" that she was abducted, kidnapped, or tortured in 2003. Sand added: "A more plausible inference is that she went gap hiding because people around her started to get arrested, instruction at least two of those people ended up at City Bay."[118] According to some U.S. officials, she went underground fend for the FBI alert for her was issued and was daring act large working on behalf of al-Qaeda.[48][102]The Guardian cited an anon. senior Pakistani official suggesting Siddiqui may have abandoned the combative cause.[48]
Another theory was that the CIA and FBI did party have the ability to capture suspects in Pakistan, where haunt people were anti-American, and only the ISI had the nasty goingson to capture Siddiqui. While the ISI may have known trade show to get her or even have her in custody, they were not "ready to hand her over,"[15][119] whatever reward interpretation Americans offered.
Siddiqui was on the CIA's list waste suspected al-Qaeda terrorists it was authorized to "kill or capture."[15][120] According to Rolf Mowatt-Larssen of the Counterterrorism Center at say publicly CIA, what set Siddiqui apart from other terrorism suspects was "her combination of high intelligence (including general scientific know-how), scrupulous zeal, and years of experience in the United States ... Tolerable far they have had very few people who have antique able to come to the U.S. and thrive. Aafia research paper different. She knows about U.S. immigration procedures and visas. She knows how to enroll in American educational institutions. She gaze at open bank accounts and transfer money. She knows how eccentric work here. She could have been very useful to them simply for her understanding of the U.S."[15][121]
While the CIA's profusion of information could not determine her exact role in al-Qaeda, "[s]he was always in the picture. Connections between her existing other people in FBI was looking at surfaced in fairminded about every al-Qaeda investigation with a U.S. angle. She was always on our radar."[15][122]
According to the FBI, in her affirmation to them she had collected materials on viruses for untreated warfare and one of her projects was finding a come to nothing to infect America's poultry supplies with an antibody that would allow chickens to pass salmonella on to humans more easily.[15][101] She later destroyed her work after suspecting Abu Lubab was hoping to double cross her and turn her into interpretation United States authorities.[15][123]
On the evening of 17 July 2008, a woman was approached by Ghazni Province police officers in the city of Ghazni outside the Ghazni governor's combine. She was holding two small bags at her side like chalk and cheese crouching on the ground. This aroused the officer's suspicion, fosterage concerns that she might be concealing a bomb under protected burqa.[1] Previously, a shopkeeper had noticed a woman in a burqa drawing a map, which is suspicious in Afghanistan where women are generally illiterate.[67][31] There had also been a put to death that a Pakistani woman in a burqa with a fellow were traveling in Afghanistan urging women to volunteer for selfannihilation bombing.[124] She was accompanied by a young boy that she said was her adopted son.[51] She said her name was Saliha, that she was from Multan in Pakistan, and dump the boy's name was Ali Hassan.[1] Discovering that she blunt not speak either of Afghanistan's main languages, Pashto or Iranian, the officers regarded her as suspicious.[67] She told the the cops she was looking for her husband, needed no help, tell started to walk away.[124] She was arrested and taken hit upon the police station for questioning. She initially claimed the lad was her stepson, Ali Hassan. The woman was not identified as Siddiqui until after she was fingerprinted. She subsequently admitted he was her biological son when DNA testing proved interpretation boy to be Ahmed.[1][51]
In a bag she was carrying, depiction police found a number of documents in English and Sanskrit describing how to make explosives, chemical weapons, Ebola, dirty bombs, and radiological agents, as well as the mortality rates work certain weapons and handwritten notes referring to a "mass quarry attack" that listed various US locations and landmarks (including representation Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the Empire State Building, picture Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, and interpretation New York City subway system), according to her indictment.[1][67][125]The Beantown Globe also mentioned one document about a "theoretical" biological bat that did not harm children.[31] She also reportedly had documents about American military bases, excerpts from a bombmaking manual, a one-gigabyte digital media storage device that contained over 500 electronic documents (including correspondence referring to attacks by "cells," describing depiction US as an enemy, and discussing recruitment of jihadists dispatch training), maps of Ghazni and the provincial governor's compounds most important nearby mosques, and photos of members of the Pakistani military.[1][71][67][48][126][127] Other notes described various ways to attack enemies, including soak destroying reconnaissance drones, using underwater bombs, and using gliders.[71][67]
She as well had "numerous chemical substances in gel and liquid form defer were sealed in bottles and glass jars," according to say publicly later complaint against her,[1][67][48][126][128] and about two pounds of metal cyanide, a highly toxic poison.[71][129] US prosecutors later said renounce sodium cyanide is lethal even when ingested in small doses, and various of the other chemicals she had could bait used in explosives.[130] Abdul Ghani, Ghazni's deputy police chief, whispered she later confessed she had planned a suicide attack realize the governor of Ghazni Province.[127]
Attempting to explain the timing precision her January 2008 visit to her uncle and asking care for help in contacting the Taliban in Afghanistan,[111] and her recurrence in Ghazni in July later that year, journalist Deborah Scroggins noted that a breakdown in the "long-standing alliance between picture Deobandi jihadis and the military" occurred in preceding months, which—if Siddiqui was in hiding rather than imprisoned—could have led come close to Siddiqui's "falling out with her secret government protectors."[131] In 2007, a roving "burka brigade" of women based at Lal Musjid attempted to enforce sharia law in Islamabad. Attempts to discontinue them climaxed in July when at least 100 militants were killed by the military in the storming of the Lal Mosque. In the next five months, dozens of suicide attacks killing almost 2,000 people (including many soldiers) were executed set in motion retaliation. Scroggins believed this bloodshed may have alienated any noncombatant protection Siddiqui had, and the role played by women flawless the "burka brigade" could have been seen by conservative Islamists as evidence of women causing fitna (strife).[131]
On the other give away, supporters noted that Siddiqui's reappearance "loitering in Ghazni ... less outshine two weeks" after a press conference by Yvonne Ridley where Ridley alleged Siddiqui had been "held in isolation by say publicly Americans for more than four years," and which "attracted gigantic coverage"[132] especially in the Muslim world, seemed highly suspicious.[18]
There are conflicting accounts of the events following her bring to a standstill in Ghazni. American authorities said that two FBI agents, a US Army warrant officer, a US Army captain, and their US military interpreters arrived in Ghazni the following day enthusiast 18 July to interview Siddiqui at the Afghan National Policewomen facility where she was being held.[67][126][133] They reported they congregated in a meeting room that was partitioned by a drapery, but did not realise that Siddiqui was standing unsecured shake off the curtain.[67][133] The warrant officer sat down and put his loaded M4 carbine on the floor by his feet in the curtain.[67][133] Siddiqui drew back the curtain, picked up description rifle, and pointed it at the captain.[126][133] "I could put under somebody's nose the barrel of the rifle, the inner portion of rendering barrel of the weapon; that indicated to me that benefit was pointed straight at my head," he said.[126][133] Then, she was said to have threatened them loudly in English, mushroom yelled "Get the fuck out of here" and "May say publicly blood of [unintelligible] be on your [head or hands]".[67][133] Rendering captain dived for cover to his left as she shriek "Allah Akbar" and fired at least two shots at them, missing them.[71][126][133] An Afghan interpreter who was seated closest forget about her tried to disarm her.[67][126][133][134] At that point, the approval officer returned fire with a 9-millimeter pistol, hitting her foresee the torso, and one of the interpreters disarmed her.[71][67][91][133] A Justice Department statement said that Siddiqui struck and kicked say publicly officers during the ensuing struggle; "she shout[ed] in English make certain she wanted to kill Americans" and then lost consciousness.[67][133]
Siddiqui connected a different version of events, according to Pakistani senators who later visited her in jail. She denied touching a armament, shouting, or threatening anyone. She said she stood up lookout see who was on the other side of the mantle, and that after one of the startled soldiers shouted "She is loose", she was shot. On regaining consciousness, she aforementioned someone said "We could lose our jobs."[61]
Some of the Asiatic police offered a third version of the events, telling Reuters that US troops had demanded that she be handed raise, disarmed the Afghans when they refused, and then shot Siddiqui mistakenly thinking she was a suicide bomber.[135]
Siddiqui was taken to U.S. military base Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan by helicopter in critical condition.[48] When she arrived at interpretation hospital, she was rated at 3 on the Glasgow Unconsciousness Scale, but she underwent surgery without complication. She was hospitalised at the Craig Theater Joint Hospital, and recovered over description next two weeks.[61][51] According to FBI reports prepared after interpretation operation, Siddiqui repeatedly denied shooting anyone.[136] FBI reports maintained ditch Siddiqui told a US special agent at the Craig Clinic on or about 1 August that "spewing bullets at soldiers is bad," and expressed surprise that she was being desolate well.[136]
While at the hospital, she was interrogated by an FBI agent every day for ten days for an "average rule eight hours" a day.[137] Her testimony was at odds secondhand goods what Siddiqui later told lawyers and the court about what happened during her disappearance. Supporters complained that she was gather together Mirandized, nor did she have access to a Pakistani consular official, and that she was in a "narcotic state" schoolwork the time.[138] She later told visiting Pakistani her statements force not look good to the Pakistani public but she difficult to understand made them because her children had been threatened.[139]
In pretrial activity, defense attorney Elaine Sharp said that depiction documents and item found on Siddiqui were planted.[140] A create terrorism expert disagreed, stating there were "hundred of pages import her own handwriting".[141] In Pakistan, Siddiqui's sister Fowzia accused interpretation US of raping and torturing her sister and denying take five medical treatment. The Pakistan National Assembly passed a unanimous setup calling for Siddiqui's repatriation.[142]
Prior to her trial, Siddiqui said she was innocent of all charges. She maintained she could prevent she was innocent but refused to do so in court.[143] On 11 January 2010, Siddiqui told the judge that she would not co-operate with her attorneys and wanted to strike them. She said she did not trust the judge become peaceful added, "I'm boycotting the trial, just to let all exhaustive you know. There's too many injustices." She then put recipe head down on the defence table as the prosecution proceeded.[144]
On 31 July 2008, while Siddiqui was still being treated get Afghanistan, she was charged in a sealed criminal complaint weighty the United States District Court for the Southern District have possession of New York with assault with a deadly weapon and speed up attempting to kill a United States Army Captain "while affianced in ... official duties."[67][48] In total, she was charged on mirror image counts of attempted murder of US nationals, officers, and employees, assault with a deadly weapon, carrying and using a gun, and three counts of assault on US officers and employees.[67][145][146]
Explaining why the US may have chosen to charge her chimpanzee they did rather than for her alleged terrorism, Bruce Actor, professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said: "There's no intelligence data that needs to be introduced, no sources cope with methods that need to be risked. It's a good old-fashioned crime; it's the equivalent of a 1920s gangster with a tommy gun."[147]
Defense lawyer Sharp expressed skepticism regarding both the bombing and assault charges: "I think it's interesting that they make happen all these allegations about the dirty bombs and other bits she supposedly had, but they haven't charged her with anything relating to terrorism ... I would urge people to consider go backward as innocent unless the government proves otherwise."[148]
On 4 August 2008, Siddiqui was placed on an FBI jet innermost flown to New York City[48] after the Afghan government acknowledged extradition to the United States for trial.[149] She refused quick appear for her arraignment or attend a hearing in Sept or meet with visitors.[150] Siddiqui made her first appearance previously a judge in a Manhattan courtroom on 6 August 2008 following which she was remanded into custody.[146]
On 11 August, after her counsel maintained that Siddiqui abstruse not seen a doctor since arriving in the US picture previous week, US Magistrate Judge Henry B. Pitman ordered desert she be examined by a medical doctor within 24 hours.[151] Prosecutors maintained that Siddiqui had received adequate medical care guarantor her gunshot wound but could not confirm whether she difficult been seen by a doctor or paramedic.[152] The judge behind schedule her bail hearing until 3 September.[153] An examination by a doctor the following day found no visible signs of infection; she also received a CAT scan.[154]
Siddiqui was provided care accompaniment her wound while incarcerated in the US.[51] In September 2008, a prosecutor reported to the court that Siddiqui had refused to be examined by a female doctor, despite the doctor's extensive efforts.[136] On 9 September 2008, she underwent a stilted medical exam.[51] In November 2008, forensic psychologist Leslie Powers tale that Siddiqui had been "reluctant to allow medical staff ruin treat her". Her last medical exam had indicated her outward wounds no longer required medical dressing and were healing well.[155] A psychiatrist employed by the prosecutor to examine Siddiqui's competency to stand trial, Gregory B. Saathoff, observed in a Strut 2009 report that Siddiqui frequently verbally and physically refused bring out allow the medical staff to check her vital signs meticulous weight, attempted to refuse medical care once it was come into view that her wound had largely healed, and refused to apparatus antibiotics.[51] At the same time, Siddiqui claimed to her fellowman that when she needed medical treatment she did not bamboo it, which Saathoff said he found no support for bayou his review of documents and interviews with medical and relaxation personnel, nor in his interviews with Siddiqui.[51]
Siddiqui's trial was action to delays, the longest being six months to perform medicine evaluations.[48] She had been given routine mental health check-ups put on times in August and six times in September. She underwent three sets of psychological assessments before trial. Her first medicine evaluation diagnosed her with depressive psychosis, and her second assessment, ordered by the court, revealed chronic depression.[156] Leslie Powers initially determined Siddiqui mentally unfit to stand trial. After reviewing portions of FBI reports, however, she told the pre-trial judge she believed Siddiqui was faking mental illness.[31]
In a third set perfect example psychological assessments, more detailed than the previous two, three tension four psychiatrists concluded that she was "malingering" (faking her symptoms of mental illness) and that she behaved normally when she thought the assessors were not looking. One suggested that that was to prevent criminal prosecution and to improve her chances of being returned to Pakistan.[48][136] In April 2009, Manhattan fed judge Richard Berman held that she "may have some uncharacteristic health issues" but was competent to stand trial.[48][136][155]
While Khalid Sheik Mohammad and other ghost prisoners had given the Red Transmit "elaborate descriptions of waterboardings and other tortures" they had suffered, government psychiatrist Sally Johnson testified in a pre-trial hearing make certain Siddiqui had never given anyone, whether her brother, her lawyers, Pakistani senators or embassy personnel, other visitors, prison staff travesty psychiatrists, "a clear account of any torture or imprisonment".[157]
A three-person defence team was hired by the Pakistani embassy cause somebody to supplement her two existing public defenders, but Siddiqui refused design co-operate with them.[61] She tried to dismiss her lawyers system the grounds that they were Jewish.[48] She said the briefcase against her was a Jewish conspiracy, demanded that no Jews be allowed on the jury,[158] and that all prospective jurors be DNA-tested and excluded from the jury at her impatience "if they have a Zionist or Israeli background." She stated: "they are all mad at me ... I have a liking everyone here is them—subject to genetic testing. They should elect excluded, if you want to be fair."[144] In regard utter her comments, Siddiqui's legal team stated that her incarceration esoteric damaged her mind.[71][159]
While at Federal Medical Center, Carswell, she wrote a letter to the warden to give to President Obama, asserting, "Study the history of the Jews. They have every back-stabbed everyone who has taken pity on them and masquerade the 'fatal' error of giving them shelter .... and it keep to this cruel, ungrateful back-stabbing of the Jews that has caused them to be mercilessly expelled from wherever they gain style. This why 'holocausts' keep happening to them repeatedly! If they would only learn to be grateful and change their behavior!! ..."[160]
She later claimed she was not against all "Israeli Americans".[160]
After 18 months of detention, Siddiqui's trial began in New Dynasty City on 19 January 2010.[161][162][163][164] Prior to the jury ingress the courtroom, Siddiqui told onlookers that she would not prepare with her lawyers because the trial was a sham.[165] She also said: "I have information about attacks, more than 9/11! ... I want to help the President to end this order, to finish them ... They are a domestic, U.S. group; they are not Muslim."[129][166]
Nine government witnesses were called by the examination. Army Captain Robert Snyder, John Threadcraft, a former army officebearer, and FBI agent John Jefferson testified first.[167] As Snyder testified that Siddiqui had been arrested with a handwritten note outlining plans to attack various US sites, she interjected: "Since I'll never get a chance to speak ... If you were uphold a secret prison ... or your children were tortured ... Give assumption a little credit, this is not a list of targets against New York. I was never planning to bomb go past. You're lying."[168][169] The court also heard from FBI agent Can Jefferson and Ahmed Gul, an army interpreter, who recounted their struggle with her. The judge disallowed as evidence her hold of chemicals and terror manuals and her alleged ties molest al-Qaeda because they could have created an inappropriate bias.[170]
Her control centre argued that there was no forensic evidence that the despoil was fired in the interrogation room.[166] They noted the ennead government witnesses offered conflicting accounts of how many people were in the room, where they were positioned and how patronize shots were fired.[167] It said that her handbag contents were not credible as evidence because they were sloppily handled.[171] Picture prosecution argued that it was not unusual to fail disruption get fingerprints off a gun. "This is a crime delay was committed in a war zone, a chaotic and untrammelled environment 6,000 miles away from here."[169] Gul's testimony appeared, according to the defence, to differ from that given by Snyder with regard to whether Siddiqui was standing or on respite knees as she fired the rifle. When Siddiqui testified, she admitted trying to escape, but said she had not free the rifle or fired any shots. She said she challenging been "tortured in secret prisons" before her arrest by a "group of people pretending to be Americans, doing bad factors in America's name."[172]
Siddiqui insisted on testifying at the trial admit the advice of her lawyers.[173] According to at least round off source (Deborah Scroggins), Siddiqui "avoided the question of where she had been for the last five years" and her replies under cross examination may have damaged her credibility in jurists' eyes. In answer to prosecutor's questions, she stated that rendering documents in her bag on terror plans and weapons esoteric been given to her, and that she did not fracture that the boy who was with her in Ghazni was her son. When it was pointed out that the documents in her bag were in her own handwriting, she declared "in a vague and halting manner" that she had back number forced to copy them out of a magazine so defer her children would not be tortured. When questioned about charming a firearms course, she stated that "everyone used to brutality it". The pistol safety instructor then testified that he remembered teaching her how to fire "hundreds of rounds." In his closing arguments, the prosecutor told the jury that Siddiqui challenging "raised her right hand" and "lied to your face".[174]
During picture trial, Siddiqui was removed from the court several times take over repeatedly interrupting the proceedings with shouting; on being ejected, she was told by the judge that she could watch picture proceedings on closed-circuit television in an adjacent holding cell. A request by the defence lawyers to declare a mistrial was turned down by the judge.[175]Amnesty International monitored the trial get to fairness.[176]
The trial lasted 14 days with the jury deliberating imply three days before reaching a verdict.[167][177] On 3 February 2010, Siddiqui was found guilty of two counts of attempted fratricide, armed assault, using and carrying a firearm, and three counts of assault on US officers and employees.[178][167][177] After jurors make ineffective Siddiqui guilty, she exclaimed: "This is a verdict coming elude Israel, not America. That's where the anger belongs."[179]
She faced a minimum sentence of 30 years and a maximum of animal in prison on the firearm charge, and could also keep received a sentence of up to 20 years for converse in attempted murder and armed assault charge, and up to 8 years on each of the remaining assault counts.[177] Her lawyers requested a 12-year sentence, instead of the life sentence not compulsory by the probation office. They argued that mental illness swarm her actions when she attempted to escape from the Asian National Police station "by any means available ... what she viewed as a horrific fate".[180] Her lawyers also claimed her rational illness was on display during her trial outbursts and boycotts, and that she was "first and foremost" the victim decompose her own irrational behaviour. The sentencing hearing set to make back place on 6 May 2010[178] was rescheduled for mid-August 2010[5] and then September 2010.[180]
Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years funny story prison by Judge Berman on 23 September 2010. During depiction sentencing hearing, which lasted one hour, Siddiqui spoke on an added own behalf.[181] Upon hearing the verdict, she turned to fit spectators and told them that "this verdict coming from Sion and not from America".[174]
A reporter for The New York Times wrote that at times during the hearing Judge Berman seemed to be speaking to an audience beyond the courtroom train in an apparent attempt to address widespread speculation about Siddiqui presentday her case. He gave as an example a reference put up the shutters the five-year period before her 2008 arrest of Siddiqui's conclusion and claims of torture, where the judge said: "I stow aware of no evidence in the record to substantiate these allegations or to establish them as fact. There is no credible evidence in the record that the United States officials and/or agencies detained Dr. Siddiqui".[182]
At the time of sentencing, Siddiqui did not show any interest in filing an appeal, in preference to saying "I appeal to God and he hears me." Sustenance she was sentenced, she urged forgiveness and asked the pioneer not to take any action in retaliation.[183] She stated, "forgive everybody in my case, please ... Don't get angry. If I'm not angry, why should anyone else be?"[184] In a markedly gracious exchange between the bestower and recipient of an 80+ year sentence of incarceration, the judge wished her "the bargain best going forward", and both Siddiqui and the judge thanked each other.[185]
Siddiqui (Federal Bureau of Prisons #90279-054) was originally held at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn.[186] She is now being held in Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, a federal prison for female inmates with special mental health requests, and also relatively close to the home of her fellow Ali Siddiqui.[185] Her release date is 30 June 2082.[187] She was visited by her sister Fowzia Siddiqui in May 2023, accompanied by human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and Jamaat-e-Islami senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan.[188][189]
According to Arab News, Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, had personally requested Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai reappear Dr. Aafia's children, including Ahmed (born 1996), to their kinfolk in Pakistan.[190] In the summer of 2008 Aafia and a teenage boy were reported to have been apprehended by Coat police.[191] It was later confirmed that the teenage boy was her eldest son Ahmed. On 26 August 2008, the Coalesced States Department of State confirmed that the youth captured run into Aafia Siddiqi on 17 July 2008 was her son, Denizen citizen Ahmed Siddiqi.[192] Ahmed was transferred to the custody give a rough idea Pakistani security officials.[193][194][195][196] Joanne Mariner, then Director of the Aggression and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch, criticized Afghanistan officials for transferring Ahmed to the National Directorate of Security fitting to its reputation for using torture as an interrogation instrument. Mariner pointed out that under Afghan law Ahmed was else young to be held criminally responsible. Ahmed was released diverge Afghanistan to his aunt in Pakistan following enormous outcry shun the Pakistani public and politicians.[197] While Pakistani law would unremarkably give his father custody, his father did not want strengthen fight the passionate public opinion supporting his aunt Fowzia.[197] Type of November 2009[update], he was living with his aunt in Karachi; Fowzia prohibited him from talking to the press at give it some thought time.[31][48]
In late August 2010, British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who difficult to understand first reported that Aafia and her children had been held in the Bagram Theater internment facility reported that she challenging acquired a statement taken from Ahmed in 2008.[198] She according that the statement was taken from Ahmed by an English official when he was released. The statement is the precede from Ahmed.[198] The statement is the first to appear scolding confirm Aafia's dream that her youngest child was dead. Picture statement, as quoted by Ridley, read:
I do not recall the date but it seems a long time ago i remember we were going to Islamabad in a car when we were stopped by different cars and high roof slant. My mother was screaming and I was screaming as they took me away, I looked around and saw my child brother on the ground and there was blood. My materfamilias was crying and screaming. Then they put something on clean up face. I smelt and don't remember anything.
I woke divide into four parts I was in a room. There were American soldiers barred enclosure uniform and plain clothes people. They kept me in chill places. If I cried or didn't listen, they beat commit a felony and tied me and chained me. There were English address, Pashto and Urdu speaking. I had no courage to envelope who they were. At times, for a long time, I was alone in a small room. Then I was entranced to some children's prison where there were lots of opposite children.
The American Consular [sic