A suspect who held 4 individuals hostage inside a Texas synagogue for a number of hours Saturday was demanding the discharge of a Pakistani lady named Aafia Siddiqui, who's serving an 86-year sentence within the state, based on experiences.
By Saturday evening all 4 hostages had been safely launched and the hostage-taker was killed, officers mentioned. The suspect was not instantly recognized.
This undated FBI handout picture reveals Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani lady who at one time studied on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise.
(Getty Photos)
Siddiqui, additionally identified in counterterrorism circles as "Lady Al-Qaeda," was sentenced in 2010 after being convicted of capturing at U.S. service members in Afghanistan, authorities have mentioned, based on the Dallas Morning Information. She is being held at a federal jail in Fort Value, Texas.
She was arrested in 2008 in Afghanistan in reference to an alleged Al-Qaeda plot for a "mass casualty attack" within the U.S. and different locations, authorities mentioned, based on the Morning Information. After she was taken into custody she reportedly fired at U.S. interrogators with an M4 assault rifle belonging to a U.S. Military officer.
Aafia Siddiqui, a attainable al-Qaeda affiliate, is seen within the custody of Counter Terrorism Division of Ghazni province in Ghazni Metropolis, Afghanistan, July 17, 2008.
(Related Press)
When she was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008, she was discovered with paperwork displaying to make soiled bombs, chemical weapons and the weaponization of the Ebola virus. She additionally had sodium cyanide on her, authorizes mentioned.
Ties to 9/11 mastermind
She can also be alleged to have ties to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, thought of the principle architect for 9/11. She labored as a courier for him and was briefly married to his nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi, a Guantánamo Bay prisoner accused of sending cash to the 9/11 hijackers.
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In 2004, Siddiqui had the dubious distinction of being the only woman on the FBI’s listing of most-wanted Al-Qaeda fugitives.
Siddiqui, 49, is a Pakistani neuroscientist with levels from MIT and Brandeis, and regardless of her expenses, she has many supporters who consider she is harmless or she was a casualty of the battle on terror.
Legislation enforcement officers block a residential road close to Congregation Beth Israel synagogue, the place a person took hostages throughout companies on Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022, in Colleyville, Texas.
(Related Press)
She left the U.S. for Pakistan along with her husband and three youngsters after 9/11 they usually divorced after she reportedly needed to assist Taliban fighters on the Afghan border. She married al-Baluchi a yr later.
Declare of innocence
Some, nevertheless, say Siddiqui was wrongly accused.
"Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is serving an unjust 86-year prison sentence for a crime that she did not commit," Faizan Syed, govt director of the Dallas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), mentioned final fall, based on the Morning News.
Individuals rally demanding the discharge of Aafia Siddiqui, who was convicted in February 2010 of two counts of tried homicide, and who's at present being detained within the U.S. throughout Worldwide Girls's Day in Karachi, Pakistan, Tuesday, March 8, 2011.
(Related Press)
CAIR condemned Saturday’s hostage scenario. Nationwide deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell known as it "antisemitic" and an "unacceptable act of evil."
However others declare Siddiqui was rightly prosecuted and convicted.
"From everything I’ve read ... I think she’s where she belongs," U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, mentioned.
The Related Press contributed to this report.
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