• English Site
• > World

America's Most Wanted

'The Most Dangerous Woman in the World'

By Juliane von Mittelstaedt

Part 3: A Suspicious Shooting

No one knows exactly why it was Aafia Siddiqui who was declared the most dangerous woman in the world four years ago. Presumably, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the key witness in the government's case against Siddiqui and her alleged terrorist activities, played an important role in her arrest and detention.

However, on May 26, 2004, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft stood against a backdrop of seven enormous black-and-white photographs of most-wanted terrorists, among them Aafia Siddiqui. He stepped up to a microphone and said that the face of al-Qaida had changed. The new al-Qaida, according to Ashcroft, is young, female and travels with family members. "It constitutes a clear and present danger for America," he said.

At this point, the supposed world's most dangerous woman had been out of sight for more than 400 days. It was not until the evening of July 17, 2008 that she reappeared.

The Would-Be Bomber in a Burqa

Normally, suicide bombers are swiftly dealt with in Afghanistan. They are shot before they can blow themselves up. But because the suspect crouching on the ground in front of the mosque in Ghazni was a woman, and because a crowd of curious onlookers had already formed, police commander Ghani Khan decided to arrest her. Bashir, one of the police officers, recalls that the woman began cursing at the men as the police attempted to take her away. "You are infidels; don't touch me!" she called out, three times, in her native Urdu.

At first no one understood what the woman was saying. Hekmatullah, the owner of a nearby shop who, like many Afghans, uses only one name, could translate Urdu for the police officers. He remembers that the woman had a Pakistani passport, and that she gave it to him and asked him to destroy it. He also remembers that her mobile phone rang twice, and that the calls were apparently coming from Pakistan.

Upon searching the two bags, police found no explosives, but small plastic bottles containing chemicals, a computer and documents, written in Urdu and English, about dirty bombs, biological weapons and recruiting jihadists.

In seeking to explain her presence at the mosque, Siddiqui says she had been ordered to follow a plan, and that the trip to Ghazni was a condition of her release. Her guards, she says, had placed the documents and chemicals in her bags.

Her attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, says Siddiqui was set up. Perhaps the Americans no longer knew what to do with their prisoners. Did they send her to Ghazni, hoping that the police there would shoot her? The CIA calls it a "disposal order."

"It would have been the perfect murder," says Sharp. Siddiqui would have been prevented from testifying, though given the clearly incriminating documents in her bag, she could easily have been declared a terrorist. But why would someone traveling to Ghazni need plans of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center or documents describing ways to shoot down drones, the use of underwater bombs and gliders?

There are many odd elements to this arrest. Two days before it happened, Abdul Rahim Dessiwal, the public prosecutor in the nearby Andar district, received an anonymous call from a woman claiming that a female suicide bomber accompanied by a boy was on her way to Ghazni.

It is also odd that when Siddiqui was brought to the police station, she said the boy was her stepson, that his name was Ali Hassan and that he was an orphan she had adopted. There is a blurred video made by the police in Ghazni who, eager to show off their big catch, had called a press conference. In the video, Siddiqui says that her name is Saliha and that she is from the city of Multan in Pakistan.

She wears a black scarf over her head and face, apparently out of fear that she will be recognized. At one point she nudges the boy as if to remind to cover his face. In response he hides his face behind his sleeve so only his hair is visible. A DNA test performed a short time later determined that the boy was Ahmed, Siddiqui's real son.

Today Ahmed lives with Fauzia Siddiqui in Karachi. He is severely disturbed emotionally, has nightmares and tells confusing stories about where he spent the past few years.

On the day after the arrest, a counterterrorism unit from Kabul turned up in Ghazni to investigate the case. The team included 10 to 12 Americans. They entered the small room where she was being held, which was partitioned by a curtain and had only one door. Siddiqui was sitting or standing behind the curtain. An Afghan, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that one of the Americans went up to her immediately, and that shots were fired a few seconds later.

Siddiqui says she passed out. She had been shot and was taken to the hospital at Bagram, where she underwent surgery and barely survived.

The Defendant

What exactly happened in those few seconds before she was shot is important, because the indictment brought by the district attorney in New York describes a version of the events that differs considerably from Siddiqui's story. It alleges that she grabbed a US soldier's M4 assault rifle, released the safety catch and fired several shots, but without hitting anyone, all within seconds. One of the soldiers, acting in self-defense, allegedly shot her.

A person would have to be familiar with the M4 to know how to release its safety catch. And would a US soldier put down his weapon when a wanted al-Qaida terrorist was sitting in the same room?

A psychological assessment of Siddiqui has lain before the judge in New York since early November. The report says she is not competent to stand trial. If the case does go to trial, and if the court takes on the military's version of the indictment, it will not include any mention of Siddiqui's alleged terrorist connections, there would be no need to prove any of the alleged terrorist acts.

And then the question of why Aafia Siddiqui, a gifted scientist, was once considered the most dangerous woman in the world, would remain a mystery forever.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan