| The US Government alleges that Aafia Siddiqui,
a Pakistani mother of three with a biology degree from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in
behavioral neuroscience from Brandeis University, near Boston
is the highest ranking known female al Qaeda operative.
She is currently married to the nephew of Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, the man who claims to have organized the September
11 terror attacks in 2001. She is not your typical
Muslim mother, Her status has her rubbing elbows with
the upper echelon of al Qaeda leadership. Despite
previous beliefs that female al Qaeda members were not viewed
as valuable, she has been described as a person of importance
by the FBI as a result of her suspected involvement
in many aspects within the American al Qaeda connection.
However her attorney says that the government has no case
against the "Female al Qaeda". June 2001, Siddiqui was
allegedly in Liberia, Africa purchasing blood diamonds. They
would be used as a convenient, hard-to-trace way of funding Al
Qaeda's global terror operations. It was mid-June 2001, three
months before September 11.
The FBI, displayed her photograph in May 2004 at a press
conference, she was a suspected terrorist with ties to a chief
mastermind of 9/11 -- and the knowledge, skills, and intention
to continue Al Qaeda's terror war in the United States and
abroad. Henceforth dubbed as "The Female al Qaeda".
The
following is an excerpt of the evidence presented describing
her arrest in Afghanistan and part of her charges of being a
terrorist:
| On or about the evening
of July 17, 2008, officers of the Ghazni Province
Afghanistan National Police ("ANP") discovered a
Pakistani woman, later identified as SIDDIQUI, along with
a teenage boy, outside the Ghazni governor's compound.
ANP officers questioned SIDDIQUI in the local dialects of
Dari and Pashtu. SIDDIQUI did not respond and appeared
to speak only Urdu, indicating that she was a foreigner.
c. Regarding SIDDIQUI as suspicious, ANP officers searched
her handbag and found numerous documents describing the
creation of explosives, chemical weapons, and other
weapons involving biological material and radiological
agents. SIDDIQUI's papers included descriptions of various
landmarks in the United States, including in New York
City. In addition, among SIDDIQUI's personal effects were
documents detailing United States military assets,
excerpts from the Anarchist's Arsenal, and a one gigabyte
(1 gb) digital media storage device (thumb drive).
d. SIDDIQUI was also in possession of numerous
chemical substances in gel and liquid form that were
sealed in bottles and glass jars. |
The alleged female terrorist is charged with attempted murder and assault for
allegedly trying to kill an American interrogator in a gun
battle after she was arrested outside an Afghan government
compound with a handbag full of chemicals and information on
chemical, biological and radiological weapons, as well as
descriptions of “various landmarks” in the United States. Two
FBI agents escorted by US soldiers interrogated her the
following day of her arrests. The soldiers were unaware that
she was being held behind a curtain and a warrant officer put
his M4 rifle on the ground. Ms Siddiqui allegedly
grabbed the rifle and fired two shots at a US army captain but
an interpreter pushed the gun away as she fired. As the
soldiers returned fire, she was hit at least once.
American prosecutors said that Ms Siddiqui opened a post
office box in Maryland for Majid Khan, a former Baltimore
resident now being held at the US detention centre in
Guantanamo Bay for terrorist ties.
Her trial should shed light on the mystery surrounding her
disappearance with her children from the Pakistani city of
Karachi in 2003. Her family claimed that she was abducted and
imprisoned in a secret US detention centre. Six human rights
groups, including Amnesty International, have listed her as a
possible “secret detainee”.
Siddiqui
and the al Qaeda Charities Connection
Siddiqui was an account holder at Fleet National Bank in
Boston. According to documents obtained by Newsweek, in 2001,
Siddiqui was making regular debit-card payments to an Islamic
charity front, Benevolence International, which is now banned
by the UN. In addition, Siddiqui was found to be active with
the Al Kifah Refugee Center, another Islamic charity that was
ostensibly raising funds for Bosnian orphans but which also
was under federal investigation. Fleet Bank security officers
began tracking a money trail from the Saudi Embassy that led
to Siddiqui, resulting in more "links" that "shocked" the bank
security officers
Aafia Siddiqui's husband was found to be purchasing
high-tech military equipment. According to Newsweek, FBI
documents stated that Khan, Siddiqui’s then husband, had
purchased body armor, night-vision goggles and a variety of
military manuals that were supposed to be sent to Pakistan.
Fleet National Bank accounts associated with the couple also
showed "major purchases" from U.S. airlines and hotels in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as well as an
$8,000 international wire transfer on December 21, 2001, to
Habib Bank, the largest bank in Pakistan. The Fleet
National Bank reports detailing all the transactions were
filed with the U.S. Treasury Department, and suggest that
Siddiqui and her estranged husband, Dr. Mohammed Amjad Khan,
may have been active terror plotters inside the country until
as late as the summer of 2002.
The Al-Kifah Refugee Center was bin Laden’s largest
fundraising group in the US and has offices in many cities.
Counterterrorism expert Steven Emerson will later call it
“al-Qaeda’s operational headquarters in the United States.”
As far back as late March 1993, Newsweek will report that
“virtually every principal figure implicated in the World
Trade Center bombing” that took place the month before
has a connection to the Al-Kifah branch in Brooklyn, New York.
The Brooklyn branch quietly shuts itself down. But other
branches stay open and the Boston branch appears to take
over for the Brooklyn branch. In April 1993, it reincorporates
under the new name Care International (which is not connected
with a large US charity based in Atlanta with the same name).
Emerson will later comment, “The continuity between the two
organizations was obvious to anyone who scratched the
surface.” For instance, Care takes over the publication of Al-Kifah’s
pro-jihad newsletter, Al Hussam. One month after the bombing,
a member of Al-Kifah/Care in Boston named Aafia Siddiqui sends
Muslims newsgroups an e-mail pledge form asking for support
for Bosnian widows and orphans trying to raise money for CARE.
Aafia Siddiqui comes from a Pakistani family in which
she was one of three children of Mohammad Siddiqui, a doctor
trained in England. Her and her siblings are all well
educated professionals residing in both the United States as
well as in Pakistan.
|
