Lady al-Qaeda: The world's most wanted woman

Islamabad would try to free Army Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, who had been missing since 2009 and was thought to be held in Pakistan by Taleban forces.

According to US officials familiar with the proposal, President Barack Obama’s national security advisers swiftly rejected the offer. To free the prisoner, Aafia Siddiqui, who’s linked to al-Qaeda and was convicted in 2010 of attempting to kill Americans in Afghanistan, would violate the administration’s policy of not granting concessions to terrorist groups, the officials concluded. It would also put a potentially dangerous fighter back on the street. Siddiqui, 42, who’s known in counter-terrorism circles as “Lady al-Qaeda”, has been linked to 9/11 ringleader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and was once on the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists list. Educated in the United States – she studied at MIT and received a doctorate from Brandeis – Siddiqui was arrested in 2008 in Afghanistan carrying sodium cyanide, as well as documents describing how to make chemical weapons and dirty bombs and how to weaponise Ebola. When FBI and military officials tried to question Siddiqui, they say she grabbed a weapon left on the table in her interrogation room and opened fired on them. She denies this charge, and has become a cause celebre in Pakistan.

Although US officials never seriously considered trading Siddiqui, she has been a perennial bargaining chip for terrorists and Islamist militants, who’ve made her release a condition for freeing a number of American and European prisoners over the years. The militants had repeatedly threatened to execute Bergdahl if Siddiqui wasn’t set free. And the Islamic State terrorists who murdered American journalist James Foley last week had demanded Siddiqui’s release to spare his life.

On Tuesday, the Islamic State again demanded her freedom, this time in exchange for a 26-year-old American woman kidnapped last year in Syria while working with humanitarian aid groups. Officials believe the Islamic State is holding at least four American prisoners, including journalist Steven Sotloff. The militants have also insisted upon a $6.6-million (Bt211 million) ransom for the young American woman, whose family doesn’t want her identified. 

While the White House has steadfastly refused to put Siddiqui’s release on the table in negotiating for American prisoners, a team inside the Defence Department has proposed trading her for American captives, according to a US lawmaker.

“We are aware of at least one entity in the Defence Department that has developed possible options to trade Siddiqui. And we can say with certainty that the option was weighed for Bergdahl and several others in captivity,” said Joe Kasper, spokesman for US Congressman Duncan Hunter, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and a former Marine who has criticised the Obama administration for not doing more to free American prisoners.

A heated debate over whether the US government should pay ransoms or conduct prisoner swaps erupted after Foley’s murder. The United States, unlike many European countries, doesn’t pay ransoms. Some terrorism experts say that Americans are less likely to be kidnapped as a result. But some former prisoners and their families want the government to pony up if doing so will free Americans.

Kasper, the spokesman for Congressman Hunter, doubted that Siddiqui posed a serious risk to US security and suggested that she was mentally impaired and likely incapable of carrying out deadly attacks. “If done correctly, there might have been ways to make [an exchange] work,” Kasper said, adding that the possibility of freeing her for Bergdahl and others has never been properly presented to “the right entity within [the Defence Department]”.

That assessment is at odds with former US officials who said that Siddiqui’s possible release for Bergdahl was quickly dismissed as unrealistic. But al-Qaeda, the Taleban, and the Islamic State don’t appear to have received the message that the United States will not trade the imprisoned scientist.

In a letter published by ABC News, Siddiqui’s family members said they were “very distraught” that her name had been invoked in the latest demands over the 26-year-old American woman held by the Islamic State.

“If the issue is true, we would like to state that our family does not have any connections to such groups or actions,” the letter reads. “We believe in a struggle that is peaceful and dignified. Associating Aafia’s name with acts of violence is against everything we are struggling for.”

The family added, “While we deeply appreciate the sincere feelings of those who, like us, wish to see the freedom of our beloved Aafia, we cannot agree with a ‘by any means necessary’ approach to Aafia’s freedom. Nor can we accept that someone else’s daughter or sister suffer like Aafia is suffering.”