Al-Qaida suspect brought to U.S.

WASHINGTON – One of the more elusive and mysterious figures linked to al-Qaida – a Pakistani mother of three who studied biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and authorities say spent years in the United States as a sleeper agent – was flown to New York on Monday night to face charges of attempting to kill U.S. military and FBI personnel in Afghanistan.

The Justice Department and the FBI said that Aafia Siddiqui, 36, was arrested in Ghazni province three weeks ago. She is accused of firing an automatic rifle at FBI agents and soldiers, and is scheduled to appear before a federal judge in Manhattan today.

Authorities believe Siddiqui used the technical skills she acquired at MIT to do what virtually no other woman has accomplished – work her way into the inner circles of al-Qaida’s command and control operation, including its chemical and biological weapons program.

But questions swirled around her Monday evening, including whether she has been in Pakistani custody for at least part of the past five years and whether there is hard evidence that she was a trained, committed and hardened al-Qaida operative, as former attorney general John Ashcroft and other U.S. officials have contended.

“This doesn’t pass the sniff test,” Elaine W. Sharp, a Massachusetts defense lawyer representing Siddiqui, said of the circumstances surrounding her client’s arrest. She said her client was not an al-Qaida terrorist, but an innocent woman who had been held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or elsewhere for the past several years and tortured by some combination of U.S., Pakistani and Afghan officials.

For years, the FBI and the CIA have been desperately trying to find Siddiqui, who they say spent several years in Boston as a “fixer” for admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, providing haven and logistical support for terrorist operatives that he sent to the United States to launch attacks.

Siddiqui also bought diamonds in Liberia as part of al-Qaida financing efforts and married Mohammed’s nephew, Ali Abd Al Aziz Ali, according to U.S. counter-terrorism officials.