Aafia Siddiqui

• 1. Introduction

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  On the evening of the 17th of July 2008, police in the Afghan city of Ghazni noticed a woman crouching on the ground outside the provincial governor's compound. She held two small bags at her side, and a young boy stood with her. The woman, in a burqa, would soon be identified as Aafia Siddiqui.

  Earlier, a shopkeeper had reported a woman in a burqa drawing a map, which struck him as suspicious. There had also been a report of a Pakistani woman and a boy travelling the country and urging women to volunteer as suicide bombers.

  The woman told the officers her name was Saliha, that she came from Multan in Pakistan, and that the boy was her adopted son, Ali Hassan. She spoke neither Pashto nor Dari, the two main languages of Afghanistan. She said she was looking for her husband, needed no help, and began to walk away. The police arrested her and took her to the station.

  Only fingerprints revealed who she was. Her name was already on the FBI's Seeking Information - Terrorism list, and she was the first woman ever featured on it.

  Who was the woman behind the false name? Why did American agents want her? And where had she been during the five years in which she, along with her three children, had dropped out of public view? Prosecutors, judges, her family and two governments each give a different answer.

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• 2. Karachi to Cambridge

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  Her father, Muhammad Salay Siddiqui, was a British-trained neurosurgeon in Karachi, and her mother, Ismet, taught classes on Islam, worked as a social worker and volunteered for charities. Ismet taught wherever she lived, founded a United Islamic Organization, and served as a member of Pakistan's parliament. Her support for strict Islam, in the face of feminist opposition to the Hudood Ordinances of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, drew his attention, and he appointed her to a Zakat Council.

  Aafia was born on the 2nd of March 1972, the youngest of three siblings, into an Urdu-speaking Muhajir family. Her parents blended devotional Islam with a determination to understand and use scientific advances. She attended school in Zambia until she was eight, then finished her schooling in Karachi. Her brother, Muhammad, studied architecture in Houston, Texas. Her sister, Fowzia, trained in neurology at Harvard, worked at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, and taught at Johns Hopkins before going back to Pakistan.

  In 1990 Siddiqui moved to Houston on a student visa to join her brother. At the University of Houston, friends and family described her interests as limited to religion and schoolwork. She avoided movies and novels, and watched television only for the news. After three semesters she transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  In 1992, as a sophomore, she won a $5,000 Carroll L. Wilson Award for a research proposal titled "Islamization in Pakistan and its Effects on Women". She travelled home to interview the architects of Islamization and the Hudood Laws, including Taqi Usmani, her family's spiritual adviser. As a junior she received a $1,200 City Days fellowship for a program that cleaned up Cambridge elementary school playgrounds. She began with a triple major in biology, anthropology and archaeology, and graduated in 1995 with a BS in biology. She lived in McCormick Hall, an all-female residence.

  Fellow students called her religious, though not unusually so for the time, and not a fundamentalist. One of them said she was "just nice and soft-spoken". She joined the Muslim Students' Association, where a fellow Pakistani remembered her recruiting for meetings and handing out pamphlets.

  The association also put her in contact with committed Islamists, including its imam, Suheil Laher, who had publicly advocated Islamization and jihad before 9/11. After her trip home, she began volunteering for the Al Kifah Refugee Center. The source says its members included the assassins of Meir Kahane and men who helped Ramzi Yousef with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. One account calls her the only woman known to raise money for Al Kifah regularly, and effective at shaming audiences into giving to jihad.

  Journalist Deborah Scroggins suggested that these contacts may have drawn Siddiqui toward terrorism. When Pakistan helped the United States arrest and extradite Yousef, Siddiqui circulated the news with a scornful note about the Pakistani government. She wrote three guides for teaching Islam, and in one she voiced the hope that people would come to her faith "until America becomes a Muslim land". She also took a 12-hour pistol training course at the Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club and mailed US military manuals to Pakistan. She moved out of her apartment after FBI agents visited the university looking for her.

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• 3. Marriage and Rupture

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  The wedding ceremony took place over the telephone. In 1995 Siddiqui agreed to a marriage arranged by her mother to Amjad Mohammed Khan, a Karachi-born anesthesiologist fresh out of medical school, whom she had never seen. Khan came to the United States, and the couple settled first in Lexington, Massachusetts, and then in the Mission Hill neighbourhood of Roxbury, Boston. He worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital. A son, Muhammad Ahmed, was born in 1996, and a daughter, Mariam Bint-e Muhammad, in 1998.

  At Brandeis University she studied cognitive neuroscience, and in early 1999 she taught the General Biology Laboratory course. Her dissertation on learning through imitation was titled Separating the Components of Imitation, and she received her PhD in 2001. A journal article she co-authored on selective learning appeared in 2003.

  One episode at Brandeis caused controversy. She presented a paper on fetal alcohol syndrome that concluded science showed why God had forbidden alcohol in the Quran. When teachers told her this was inappropriate, she complained of discrimination to the associate dean of graduate studies and threatened to "open a can of worms".

  After her doctorate she told an adviser she planned to put her family ahead of a career. She began translating biographies of Arab Afghan fighters killed in jihad, written by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. She became stricter in her observance, wearing a niqab and avoiding music, even background music at science exhibits.

  In 1999 she founded a nonprofit, the Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching, with herself as president, her husband as treasurer and her sister as resident agent. She also co-founded the Dawa Resource Center, which offered faith-based services to prison inmates.

  Khan later blamed the strain in the marriage on her overwhelming devotion to activism and jihad. She briefly left him after he threw a baby bottle that split her lip and sent her to the emergency room for stitches. In the summer of 2001 the couple moved to Malden, Massachusetts.

  According to Khan, Siddiqui insisted after the 9/11 attacks that the family leave the country because their lives were in danger. Once in Pakistan, she demanded they move to the Afghan border so he could serve as a medic for the Taliban mujahideen. He hesitated, partly because his parents opposed the move. She returned to him in the United States in January 2002, after he accepted her conditions, including joining her in Islamic activities. She began teaching their children at home.

  By then the FBI was questioning her former professors and associates. In May 2002 agents asked the couple about $10,000 worth of night vision equipment, body armour and military manuals bought over the internet. The manuals included How to Make C-4. Khan said the purchases were for hunting and camping, and later told authorities he made them to please his wife.

  On the 26th of June 2002, before a second appointment with the FBI, the family flew back to Karachi. In August, Khan accused her of abuse and manipulation and announced that he wanted a divorce. Her father died of a heart attack shortly afterward, and her family blamed Khan and the marital strife. Her third child, Suleman, was born in September 2002. The divorce was finalised on the 21st of October 2002, and the couple never saw each other again.

  In February 2003, in Karachi, she married Ammar al-Baluchi, an accused al-Qaeda member and nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Her family denies the marriage. Pakistani and US intelligence sources, a defense psychologist at her trial, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's own family all say it happened. It lasted only a couple of months. One of Mohammed's uncles, Mohammed Hussein, said al-Baluchi grew alienated from her "liberal way of life".

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• 4. The Case Against Her

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  On the 25th of December 2002 Siddiqui left Karachi for the United States, telling her ex-husband she was looking for work. She came back on the 2nd of January 2003, and Khan doubted her story because universities were on winter break. The US government later said the real purpose was to help Majid Khan, an alleged al-Qaeda operative, open a post office box. That would let him appear to be living in America while mailing an application for an immigration travel document. Siddiqui told the FBI she did it as a favour to a family friend.

  According to the US government, Majid Khan belonged to a cell led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that planned attacks in the United States, at Heathrow Airport in Britain, and inside Pakistan. In the American plan, C-4 explosives would arrive hidden in shipping containers of women's and children's clothing. Targets included petrol stations, underground fuel storage in Baltimore, and pumps at water treatment facilities. A dummy import-export business run by Saifullah Paracha would bring in the cargo. Paracha was later held at Guantanamo Bay for 18 years before returning to Pakistan in 2021. Siddiqui's alleged role, in the government's words, was to "rent houses and provide administrative support for the operation".

  The plot unravelled after Majid Khan was arrested in Pakistan on the 1st of March 2003 and sent to Guantanamo. In the United States, another operative, Uzair Paracha, was arrested carrying the key to the post box. Majid Khan testified that he gave Siddiqui money, photographs and a completed form that looked and functioned like a passport. Her lawyer suggested identity theft, and her sister said the box was meant for job applications at American universities. Defense attorneys also noted that investigators' testimony was likely extracted under torture. Siddiqui was never charged over the post box, and her ex-husband was questioned and released.

  A second allegation did not survive scrutiny. A dossier prepared by UN investigators for the 9/11 Commission in 2004 placed a woman using the alias Fahrem or Feriel Shahin among six alleged al-Qaeda members who bought $19 million of blood diamonds in Monrovia, Liberia. A go-between in the deal identified Siddiqui three years later, and Alan White, a former chief investigator of the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Liberia, said she was the woman. Her lawyer pointed to credit card receipts placing her in Boston at the time. FBI agent Dennis Lormel said the agency ruled out the claim that she had evaluated diamond operations in Liberia, though she remained suspected of money laundering.

  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 11th of September 2001 attacks, was waterboarded 183 times after his arrest. The "confessions" he gave under torture named Siddiqui and set off a chain of arrests. On the 25th of March 2003 the FBI issued a global alert seeking her and Khan for questioning, describing her as a courier of blood diamonds and a financial fixer for al-Qaeda. Several media organizations later dubbed her "Lady al-Qaeda".

  On the 26th of May 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft listed her among seven most-wanted al-Qaeda fugitives and called her a "clear and present danger to the US". The announcement drew scepticism, because the day before, The New York Times had quoted the Department of Homeland Security as seeing no current risks. American Democrats accused the Bush administration of trying to shift attention from falling poll numbers and the failings of the Iraq invasion.

  Within the CIA, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen of the Counterterrorism Center said her mix of intelligence, scientific know-how and religious zeal set her apart. He stressed her years in America, adding: "She knows how things work here." Siddiqui was on the CIA's list of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists it was authorized to kill or capture.

  The FBI later said she told them she had collected materials on viruses for biological warfare. One project, she reportedly said, was to find a way to infect American poultry with an antibody that would help chickens pass salmonella to humans. She said she destroyed her work after suspecting that a man named Abu Lubab planned to betray her to the American authorities.

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• 5. Five Missing Years

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  She left her parents' house in Karachi on the 30th of March 2003 with her three children. Her parents said she was heading to Islamabad to visit an uncle, but she never arrived. For the next five years, the documented record goes quiet and the competing stories begin.

  On the 1st of April 2003, Pakistani newspapers reported, and the interior ministry confirmed, that a woman had been taken into custody on terrorism charges. Within days both the Pakistani government and the FBI said they had no involvement. Her sister Fowzia said Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat had told her Aafia was released and would be home shortly. Through 2003 and 2004 the FBI and Pakistan both described her as still at large.

  Her supporters and the Pakistani government say the United States held her. Her mother and sister denied any al-Qaeda link and said she was secretly detained in Afghanistan. They pointed to former detainees at Bagram Air Base who said she had been held there. Her sister said she was raped and tortured for five years. British journalist Yvonne Ridley, a Muslim convert and former Taliban captive, said Siddiqui spent those years in solitary confinement as "Prisoner 650". Six human rights groups, including Amnesty International, listed her as a possible ghost prisoner.

  Her uncle, Shams ul-Hassan Faruqi, signed an affidavit saying she visited him in Islamabad on the 22nd of January 2008. He said she told him Pakistani agencies had held her and asked for help crossing into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In a separate account he said she claimed to have been held and tortured at Bagram for years, then released to serve as a double agent against extremist groups.

  The American government rejects this. A cable from the US Embassy in Islamabad, among those released by Wikileaks in 2010, quoted Bagram officials assuring diplomats that they had not been holding Siddiqui for the last four years. Ambassador Anne Patterson stated she had not been in US custody at any time before July 2008. State Department spokesman Gregory Sullivan said she had been concealed from public view "by her own choosing". Assistant US Attorney David Raskin said agencies found "zero evidence" she was kidnapped or tortured in 2003. He called it more plausible that she hid because people around her were being arrested.

  Siddiqui herself gave mixed accounts. After her 2008 arrest, she told the FBI she had first gone into hiding with the al-Baluchi family, and later said she was abducted and imprisoned. Her lawyer later repudiated the first statement. In the FBI version, she worked at the Karachi Institute of Technology in 2005, was in Afghanistan in 2007, and spent time in Quetta, sheltered by various people. An Afghan intelligence official believed she had worked with Jaish-e-Mohammed. Her son Ahmed reportedly told Afghan investigators that the two of them had worked in an office collecting money for the poor.

  Khan said he saw her at Islamabad airport in April 2003, stepping off a flight with their son, and again two years later in a Karachi traffic jam. A senior Pakistani official, quoted by The Guardian, suggested she might have abandoned the militant cause. Another theory held that only Pakistan's ISI could have seized her, and that it was unwilling to hand her over whatever reward the Americans offered.

  The fate of her children is the murkiest part. Her own statements, recorded in a psychiatric exam, swung between saying the two youngest were dead and saying they were with her sister Fowzia. Khan believed they were in Karachi with her family. Ahmed was handed to his aunt in Pakistan in September 2008, and the aunt barred the press from speaking to him.

  In April 2010 a girl was found outside the family home in Karachi wearing a collar bearing the address. Interior Minister Rehman Malik said DNA identified her as Siddiqui's daughter, Mariyam. A Pakistani ministry official said she had been held captive in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2010. The US government said it had not held Siddiqui in that period. Earlier, tests on a girl who might have been the daughter had been inconclusive, and Fowzia doubted she was her niece.

  In August 2010, Ridley released a statement she said Ahmed gave an American official in 2008. In it, he recalled a car being stopped, his mother screaming, and his baby brother on the ground with blood nearby. He described being kept in different places, chained and beaten, and later told his younger brother was dead. The Daily Times reported that both the girl and Ahmed could speak only English and Dari when they came home.

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• 6. The Ghazni Shooting

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  The bag the Ghazni police searched held pages in English and Urdu on making explosives, chemical weapons, Ebola, dirty bombs and radiological agents. Handwritten notes referred to a "mass casualty attack" and listed American landmarks. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge and the New York City subway were all named. Investigators also reported a one-gigabyte storage device with over 500 electronic documents, maps of Ghazni and the governor's compound, and photographs of Pakistani military members. She carried chemicals in sealed bottles and jars, including about two pounds of sodium cyanide. Abdul Ghani, Ghazni's deputy police chief, said she later confessed to planning a suicide attack on the province's governor.

  Her defense attorney, Elaine Sharp, said the documents and items were planted. A government terrorism expert replied that hundreds of pages were in her own handwriting.

  The timing of her reappearance has been read in two ways. Scroggins noted that the long-standing alliance between Deobandi jihadis and the Pakistani military had broken down in the months before. In July 2007 the military stormed the Lal Mosque in Islamabad, where a roving "burka brigade" of women had tried to enforce sharia law, and at least 100 militants died. Retaliatory suicide attacks over the next five months killed almost 2,000 people. Scroggins suggested that if Siddiqui had been in hiding, she may have lost her protectors. Supporters noted that her reappearance came less than two weeks after a press conference at which Ridley said Americans had held her in isolation for more than four years.

  On the 18th of July 2008, according to American authorities, two FBI agents, an Army warrant officer, an Army captain and their interpreters arrived to interview her at the Afghan police facility. They met in a room divided by a curtain, unaware that she was standing unsecured behind it. The warrant officer set his loaded M4 carbine on the floor near his feet.

  The prosecution account says she drew back the curtain, took up the rifle, and pointed it at the captain. "I could see the barrel of the rifle," he testified, and it seemed aimed straight at his head. She reportedly yelled threats in English and "Allah Akbar", and fired at least two shots that missed. An Afghan interpreter tried to disarm her. The warrant officer returned fire with a 9-millimeter pistol and hit her in the torso, and an interpreter took the rifle.

  Siddiqui told Pakistani senators a different story. She said she never touched a gun or threatened anyone, and that she stood up to see who was behind the curtain. A soldier shouted that she was loose, and she was shot. A third version came from some Afghan police, who told Reuters that US troops demanded her handover, disarmed the Afghans when they refused, and then shot her by mistake, believing she was a suicide bomber.

  She was flown by helicopter to Bagram Airfield in critical condition and rated 3 on the Glasgow Coma Scale. She came through surgery without complication and recovered over two weeks at the Craig Theater Joint Hospital. An FBI agent questioned her every day for ten days, averaging eight hours a day. FBI reports say she denied shooting anyone, but told an agent on or about the 1st of August that "spewing bullets at soldiers is bad". Supporters said she was not read her rights and was in a narcotic state. She later told Pakistani visitors that she made her statements because her children had been threatened.

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• 7. Trial and Sentence

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  On the 31st of July 2008, while she was still recovering in Afghanistan, prosecutors filed a sealed complaint in the Southern District of New York. Charges included two counts of attempted murder of US nationals, armed assault, using a firearm, and three counts of assault on US officers and employees. She was not charged with terrorism. Georgetown professor Bruce Hoffman explained why: no intelligence data had to be introduced and no sources risked. "It's a good old-fashioned crime," he said. Defense lawyer Sharp noted that the government had made no terrorism charge despite its talk of dirty bombs.

  She was flown to New York on an FBI jet on the 4th of August 2008, after Afghanistan granted extradition. Her first appearance before a judge in a Manhattan courtroom came on the 6th of August. Clive Stafford Smith later alleged that Pakistan's military under Pervez Musharraf had handed her over in a bounty-based deal.

  Her health and sanity became issues. When her counsel said she had not seen a doctor, Magistrate Judge Henry B. Pitman ordered an examination within 24 hours. The prosecution's psychiatrist, Gregory Saathoff, wrote in March 2009 that she often refused vital-sign checks, rejected antibiotics, and resisted care even after the wound healed. One psychiatric evaluation diagnosed depressive psychosis, and another chronic depression. Forensic psychologist Leslie Powers first found her unfit for trial, then said she believed Siddiqui was faking. In a third round, three of four psychiatrists concluded she was malingering. In April 2009, Judge Richard Berman ruled that she "may have some mental health issues" but was competent. Government psychiatrist Sally Johnson noted that she had never given anyone a clear account of torture or imprisonment, unlike Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other ghost prisoners who gave the Red Cross detailed descriptions.

  Her relations with her defense team collapsed. The Pakistani embassy hired a three-person team to supplement her two public defenders, and she refused to cooperate. She tried to dismiss her lawyers because they were Jewish, called the case a Jewish conspiracy, and demanded that prospective jurors be DNA-tested and excluded if they had a Zionist or Israeli background. Her legal team said her incarceration had damaged her mind. Later, at Federal Medical Center, Carswell, she wrote a letter to the warden for President Obama with further antisemitic claims.

  On the 11th of January 2010, she told the judge, "I'm boycotting the trial", and put her head down on the defense table. The trial began in New York on the 19th of January 2010 after 18 months of detention. The prosecution called nine witnesses. The judge barred evidence of the chemicals, the terror manuals and the alleged al-Qaeda ties, on the grounds that they could create improper bias.

  The defense argued there was no forensic evidence the rifle was fired in the room, and that the nine witnesses disagreed on how many people were present and how many shots were fired. The prosecution answered that it was unsurprising to lift no fingerprints, and that the crime was committed in a chaotic war zone 6,000 miles away.

  When Captain Robert Snyder testified about the handwritten note of plans, Siddiqui interrupted. She said, "this is not a list of targets against New York", and added, "I was never planning to bomb it." Against her lawyers' advice she took the stand and admitted trying to escape but denied taking the rifle or firing it. She said she had been tortured in secret prisons by people pretending to be Americans. Under cross-examination she said the documents were given to her, then that she was forced to copy them from a magazine so her children would not be tortured. A pistol safety instructor testified he had taught her to fire "hundreds of rounds". The prosecutor told jurors that she had "lied to your face". She was removed from court several times for shouting and watched on closed-circuit television in a holding cell. Amnesty International monitored the proceedings for fairness.

  After 14 days of trial and three days of deliberation, the jury found her guilty on the 3rd of February 2010. She shouted that the verdict "is coming from Israel, not America". Her lawyers asked for a 12-year sentence, arguing mental illness drove her attempt to flee what she saw as a horrific fate. The probation office recommended life.

  On the 23rd of September 2010, Judge Berman sentenced her to 86 years. Speaking directly to a wider audience, he said he knew of no evidence in the record that US officials or agencies had held her, and found "no credible evidence" of it. She told the court, "I am a Muslim, but I do love America, too." She declined to appeal, saying, "I appeal to God and he hears me." She asked the public not to retaliate, and the judge and Siddiqui thanked each other, with the judge wishing her "the very best going forward".

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• 8. A Rallying Cry

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  Within Pakistan, thousands of students, political figures and activists protested the verdict. Some shouted anti-American slogans, and some burned the American flag and effigies of President Barack Obama. Siddiqui sent word through her lawyer that she wanted no violent protests or reprisals. Graffiti reading "Free Dr. Aafia" appeared even in remote parts of the country. Her sister Fowzia spoke at rallies, and the National Assembly passed a unanimous resolution calling for her return.

  Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani called her a "daughter of the nation", and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif promised to push for her release. Newspaper editor Shireen Mazari wrote that the verdict surprised no one familiar with the vindictive mood of the American public after 9/11. Her case has been called a "flashpoint of Pakistani-American tensions".

  Not every Pakistani agreed. Her ex-husband said she was reaping the fruit of her own decision and wished the truth would come out. Shakil Chaudhry lamented the mass hysteria of her supporters. When columnist Mubashir Lucman questioned Fowzia's account, graffiti insulting him appeared across Karachi.

  For al-Qaeda and Pakistani jihadi groups her case became a rallying cry. A video from Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan leader Hakimullah Mehsud said the 2009 Camp Chapman attack, which killed seven CIA officers in Afghanistan, was partly revenge for her imprisonment. The 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt came one day after he released another video promising to avenge her. The attempt was made by Faisal Shahzad, a recently naturalized Pakistan-born citizen.

  Her name then surfaced in a string of hostage demands. The Taliban reportedly threatened to execute captured US soldier Bowe Bergdahl in retaliation for her conviction, and he was released on the 31st of May 2014 in exchange for five Guantanamo detainees. In September 2010 the Taliban kidnapped Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove and insisted they would hand her over only for Siddiqui. Norgrove died on the 8th of October 2010 when a rescuer's grenade accidentally killed her.

  In December 2011, Ayman al-Zawahiri demanded Siddiqui's release in exchange for Warren Weinstein, an American aid worker kidnapped in Pakistan on the 13th of August 2011. Weinstein was accidentally killed in a drone strike in January 2015. Her release was also among the demands in the In Amenas hostage crisis in Algeria in January 2013. In June 2013, captors of two Czech women kidnapped in Pakistan made the same demand, and both women were freed in March 2015.

  In 2014, the militant who claimed responsibility for beheading journalist James Foley reportedly mentioned her in an email to Foley's family as part of a possible prisoner swap. In February 2015 Representative Paul Gosar said the family of Kayla Mueller had been told a swap involving Siddiqui was underway in the months before Mueller's death. Qasim al-Raymi of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula demanded her release for journalist Luke Somers, who died during a rescue attempt in December 2014.

  In January 2022, a man claiming to be her brother took hostages at the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, near the prison where she is held, and demanded her release. Police shot him dead, and the hostages were rescued.

  Siddiqui, prisoner number 90279-054, was first held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. She is now at Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Fort Worth, a federal prison for women with special mental health needs. Fowzia visited in May 2023, accompanied by lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan. Her listed release date is the 30th of June 2082.

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