Who is Dr Aafia Siddiqui?
Dr Aafia Siddiqui is a US-educated Pakistani scientist. In 2010, she was handed down an 86-year sentence by a federal district court in New York for attempting to murder and assault someone during her interview with US officers in Ghazni, Afghanistan. However, she denied these charges.
According to the reports, Dr Aafia Siddiqui was the first woman to be suspected of Al-Qaeda links by the US, but never convicted of it. She traveled to the United States, where her brother lived, at the age of 18 to study at Boston’s prestigious MIT, later earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Brandeis University.
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Following the 9/11 tragedy, Aafia was flagged by the FBI for her donations to certain organizations. She also made a purchase worth $10,000 of night-vision goggles and books on warfare. The United States suspected Aafia joined Al-Qaeda from America, returning to Pakistan where she married into the family of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed –- an architect of the 9/11 attacks.
She disappeared in around 2003, along with her three children, in Karachi. Five years later, she turned up in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s war-torn neighbor, where she was arrested by local forces in the restive southeastern province of Ghazni.
