(Jewish Group) Who is Aafia Siddiqui, the prisoner the TX synagogue hostage-taker wanted freed

[Behind the Aegis]

Who is Aafia Siddiqui, the prisoner whom the Colleyville synagogue hostage-taker reportedly wanted to free?

The name Aafia Siddiqui became familiar to many on Saturday, when a man took a rabbi and his congregants hostage in a synagogue in Colleyville near Fort Worth, Texas.

That’s because the hostage-taker was reportedly demanding the release of Siddiqui from prison.

After Sept. 11, 2001, Siddiqui — a neuroscientist with a doctorate from Brandeis University — became the first woman accused of working with al-Qaeda leadership and was dubbed “Lady al-Qaeda” in the press. She has family ties to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the chief architect of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. In 2010, she was convicted of attempting to kill American military personnel in Afghanistan while being detained in 2008 on suspicion of plotting attacks in New York.

Ahead of her trial, Siddiqui demanded that the court exclude Jews from the jury and said she wanted the jurors to undergo genetic testing.

“If they have a Zionist or Israeli background . . . they are all mad at me,” Siddiqui told the judge. “I have a feeling everyone here is them [sic] — subject to genetic testing. They should be excluded if you want to be fair,” she said.

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