Why ‘Lady Al Qaeda’ is locked up in Texas
DUBBED ‘Lady Al Qaeda’ after the FBI put her on its ‘most wanted’ list of terrorists, Aafia Siddiqui has become a cause celebre for terror groups around the world.
The Taliban, Al Qaeda and Islamic State have all offered to free Western hostages in return for her release from a Texas prison, where she is serving an 86-year sentence for trying to kill US soldiers.
And now, after more than 11 years behind bars, she is in the spotlight once again after Blackburn terrorist Malik Faisal Akram demanded she be freed when he took hostages in a Texas synagogue this weekend.
The 49-year-old neuroscientist is a mother-of-three who studied at prestigious universities in the US before authorities believe she was radicalised. She left America and was later detained in Afghanistan, where she was alleged to have been carrying notes detailing a ‘mass casualty attack’ on several sites in New York.
When US officials arrived to interrogate her, she grabbed a rifle that had been left on the floor and opened fire on her captors before she was shot. In 2010 Siddiqui was convicted of attempted murder and sent to Fort Worth in Texas to serve her sentence.
Siddiqui was born in Karachi, Pakistan. She later went on to study biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before gaining a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Brandeis University, near Boston.
She married a doctor from Pakistan, Amjad Khan, in 1995 and the pair had three children. In May 2002, just months after the September 11 2001 terror attacks, the couple were questioned after allegedly buying night-vision goggles, body armour and military manuals.
A few months later they divorced. Siddiqui then married Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who masterminded the 9/11 attacks.
In 2003 the FBI issued a global alert for Siddiqui, who vanished a few weeks later. Her family claim she was being detained at Bagram base in Afghanistan, which US authorities deny.
After she was tried in the US and jailed, Pakistan condemned her conviction and thousands took to the streets in protest.