The push to have Lady Al Qaeda freed. Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a major player in a long list of American and International Islamic groups, and terrorist groups, wants her freed; Freeing Siddiqui, an American-educated neuroscientist, turned attempted jihadist murderer, was one of the hostage taker’s demands in the Texas synagogue attack in Jan 2022.
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, A Pakistani Neuroscientist One of F.B.I.’s Most Wanted, At One Time, F.B.I.’s Most Wanted Aafia Siddiqui holds biology and neuroscience degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and Brandeis University. In 2003, Siddiqui married Ammar al-Baluchi, the nephew of 9/11 al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in Karachi.
Siddiqui was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 by local forces. They found her with two kilos of poison sodium cyanide and plans for chemical attacks on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building. She also had plans of how to make a dirty bomb and weaponize Ebola.
Among the documents in her possession were handwritten notes referring to a “mass-casualty attack” listing locations commonly targets Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and the Empire State Building. But one target a bio-hazard facility, Plum Island (Infectious disease research), remains virtually unknown to the American public. A consideration that this government facility (officially known as the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center) was a target is unnerving.
Just last month, CAIR’s Dallas-Fort-Worth chapter held an event called “In Pursuit of Freedom” at the East Plano Islamic Center in Plano, Texas, calling for Siddiqui’s release, claiming she had been “kidnapped, ripped apart from her children, shot at, renditioned to the U.S., and is currently serving an 86-year prison sentence for a crime she did not commit.”
On November 18, 2021 the CAIR chapter held an online fundraiser for Siddiqui’s defense team. Days earlier, multiple Muslim advocacy groups, including CAIR, American Muslims for Palestine (A.M.P.), the Islamic Circle of North America Council for Social Justice (ICNA-CSJ), and the Muslim American Society PACE, held a “Free Dr. Aafia Advocacy Day” in Washington D.C., where they met with congressional offices and lobbied for Siddiqui’s release.
A.M.P., an anti-Israel group for expressing support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement against the Jewish state, has close ties to “Squad” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who includes the founder among one of her donors and allies.
Siddiqui is a Pakistani citizen and mother of three children. Born on March 2, 1972, she was the most-wanted woman in the world for four years. The F.B.I. considered her so dangerous that former Attorney General John Ashcroft placed her — the only woman — on his “Deadly Seven” list. The American press nicknamed Siddiqui the terrorist organization al-Qaida’s “Mata Hari” and its “female genius.” She’s believed to have raised money for al-Qaida by collecting donations and smuggling diamonds.
A US jury had convicted Siddiqui in 2010 of attempting to shoot and kill a group of F.B.I. agents, U.S. soldiers, and interpreters who were about to interrogate her in Ghazni, Afghanistan.
