British national Malik Faisal Akram was killed Saturday during a confrontation with U.S. federal agents at a synagogue in Fort Worth, Texas, where he kidnapped a rabbi With three other hostages, he was “focused on just one issue” and, according to law enforcement officials, had demanded to see a woman serving a sentence in the United States.
U.S. media reports said Akram was likely referring to Aafia Siddiqui, a highly educated Pakistani neuroscientist who was convicted in 2010 on terrorism charges. The federal women’s prison where Siddiqui is located is less than 40 kilometers from where Akram was killed. The Texas Department of Public Safety said he had claimed he and the woman he wanted to meet would “go to Jenna after seeing her.” Siddiqui, once described as “the most wanted woman in the world” and “Mrs al-Qaeda”, has been a motivating figure for Islamists for many years.
In 2014, ISIS separately offered to free journalist James Foley and an American woman – later identified as Kayla Mueller – in exchange for Siddiqui’s freedom. The Taliban and the Haqqani network tried to trade US Army deserter Bowie Bergdahl for her. Siddiqui, 49, was born in Karachi and studied in the US in the 1990s. She was trained at MIT and received her PhD in Neuroscience from Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 2001.
In 2002, she opened a mailbox in the name of Al Qaeda suspect Majid Khan in Pakistan, who is currently at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, according to the FBI.
In a profile published in 2010, The New York Times reported that Siddiqui was married to her second husband, Ammar al-Baluchi, the 9/11 conspirator and Daniel Pearl’s murderer, Khalid. De Sheikh Mohammed’s nephew, who himself was one of the funders of the 9/11 attacks, was in Pakistan in 2003 and then disappeared for about five years. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ammar al-Baluchi are both being held at the Guantanamo Bay facility.
Complete News Source : The Indian EXPRESS
