NEW YORK (CNN) -- A Pakistani scientist accused of shooting at U.S. officers while in Afghan custody last month was due to appear before a U.S. magistrate judge Tuesday morning in New York.
Aafia Siddiqui allegedly shot at U.S. officers while in Afghan custody last month.
Aafia Siddiqui, whom the FBI had sought for several years for terrorism, faces federal charges of attempted murder and assault of a U.S. officer and U.S. employees, federal authorities said.
The 36-year-old American-educated neuroscientist is a suspected member of al Qaeda. If convicted, she faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on each charge.
On July 18 Siddiqui shot at two FBI special agents, a U.S. Army warrant officer, an Army captain and military interpreters who unknowingly entered a room where she was being held unsecured at an Afghan facility, officials said.
Siddiqui was behind a curtain when she used an officer's rifle to shoot at the group, officials said. She shot twice but hit no one, they said. The warrant officer returned fire with a pistol, shooting Siddiqui at least once. She struggled with the officers before she lost consciousness and was then given medical attention.
The day before the shootings, Afghan police arrested Siddiqui outside the Ghazni governor's compound where they found bomb-making instructions, excerpts from the "Anarchist's Arsenal," papers with descriptions of U.S. landmarks, and substances sealed in bottles and glass jars, U.S. officials said Monday.
Elaine Whitfield Sharp, an attorney representing Siddiqui, told CNN she found "a lot of the allegations implausible" and argued that the charges "don't pass the sniff test."
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"This is a very intelligent woman. What is she doing outside of the governor's residence? The woman is a Ph.D. Is a woman like this really that stupid? There is an incongruity and I have trouble accepting the government's claims," the attorney said.
"If she was carrying fluids and was considered dangerous, then why was she left unattended in a room behind a curtain? And this dangerous, hardened criminal picks up a gun and misses?"
Speaking to reporters in Pakistan, Siddiqui's sister, Fowzia Siddiqui, is urging authorities to presume her sister is innocent and is demanding that the government be required to prove any charges against her "beyond a reasonable doubt."
"I fear a political prosecution to protect the United States from embarrassment, rather than from 'terrorism,'" Fowzia Siddiqui said.
Since 2003, Siddiqui's whereabouts were the source of much speculation. She and her three small children were reportedly apprehended in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003 after the FBI issued an alert for information about her location earlier that month, according to Amnesty International.
It was the first time the FBI issued a worldwide alert for a woman in connection to al Qaeda.
Several reports indicated that Siddiqui was arrested in Karachi in 2003 and was in U.S. custody at a base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. And initial reports from U.S. officials said Pakistani officials indicated she was in custody there.
But the FBI later said she was missing, and in May 2004 then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller identified Siddiqui among several sought-after al Qaeda members.
However, Amnesty International included her on a June 2007 list as someone for whom there was "evidence of secret detention by the United States and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown."
Government sources have said that al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed named Siddiqui among al Qaeda's operatives.__________________________________________________________
Do people really think a woman can't be a terrorist? And bleep....we are EDUCATING them. How's that for ironic.
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