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Pakistani Charged In Soldier Attack

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The Washington Post

Published: August 6, 2008

WASHINGTON - A U.S.-educated Pakistani woman suspected of links to al-Qaida appeared in federal court Tuesday in New York on charges of attempting to kill American military officers and FBI agents in Afghanistan last month.

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, a neuroscientist with degrees from MIT and Brandeis University, was flown to New York on Monday, a little more than two weeks after she was shot and wounded while allegedly trying to open fire on some Americans who came to question her in a police station in Afghanistan's Ghazni province.

An FBI criminal complaint unsealed Monday described a chaotic scene at the police station in which Siddiqui, who had been arrested by Afghan police, managed to grab a U.S. soldier's rifle and fire two errant shots as an interpreter tried to wrestle the weapon away from her.

The soldier returned fire with a pistol and hit Siddiqui at least once in the upper body, the complaint said.

A lawyer for Siddiqui, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, disputed the government's account. She told reporters that Siddiqui is "not a terrorist" and has done nothing wrong.

Siddiqui's family has charged that U.S. authorities secretly detained her in Afghanistan after she disappeared in Pakistan in March 2003 with her three children.

The U.S. government says it was not holding Siddiqui and had no knowledge of her whereabouts for the past five years until she was arrested in Ghazni.
Siddiqui made her initial appearance Tuesday before a federal magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan and was detained. A bail hearing was set for Monday.

The FBI said in March 2003 that it wanted to question Siddiqui about possible connections to terrorism, including ties to Adnan G. el Shukrijumah, a suspected al-Qaida member who was born in Saudi Arabia and lived at one time in suburban Miami.

Siddiqui's name reportedly came up during interrogations of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, after he was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.

In 2004, the FBI described Siddiqui as "an al-Qaida operative and facilitator" who was among seven people being sought in connection with potential terrorist attacks in the United States.

American intelligence also said Siddiqui worked with an al-Qaida operative known as Ammar al-Baluchi and married him shortly before he was arrested in Pakistan in late April 2003.

According to the FBI complaint, Siddiqui was picked up by the Afghan National Police along with a teenage boy outside the Ghazni governor's compound on July 17.

Officers regarded her as suspicious. They "searched her handbag and found numerous documents describing the creation of explosives, chemical weapons, and other weapons involving biological material and radiological agents," the complaint said.

Also found among Siddiqui's belongings, it said, were "descriptions of various landmarks in the United States, including in New York City," documents detailing U.S. "military assets" and excerpts from "The Anarchist Arsenal," a bomb-making manual.

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