#ISIS Offered to Exchange U.S. Hostages for Pakistani Neuroscientist and al-Qaeda Gun Moll Aafia Siddiqui

At the Los Angeles Times, "Islamic State has offered to trade hostages for imprisoned 'superstar'":

For months, Islamic State militants have engaged in a high-stakes game of deadly extortion, threatening to behead American captives they are holding in the Middle East unless their demands are met, including an end to U.S. airstrikes targeting their strongholds in Iraq.

But the price tag for the hostages' freedom has also included another prize: a diminutive, 90-pound Pakistani neuroscientist who studied at MIT before launching into a two-decade relationship with some of the best-known terrorists in the world.

The figure at the top of Islamic State's want list is Aafia Siddiqui, the wife of a key facilitator of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and a former employee of the Al Qaeda mastermind who planned them. Siddiqui is serving an 86-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas on her conviction four years ago of attempted murder for grabbing an unsecured rifle and firing on U.S. agents who were interrogating her in Afghanistan.

Siddiqui was arrested in the town of Ghazni in July 2008, having made her way onto the U.S. most-wanted list for her work with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, identified by the 9/11 Commission as the principal architect of the 2001 hijackings.

But it was her activism with Islamist groups in the United States in the 1990s that first brought her to the attention of U.S. agents. Siddiqui was active with the Muslim Students Assn. and a Muslim charity linked to fundraising for Osama bin Laden while she was studying biology at MIT, later earning her doctorate in behavioral neuroscience at Brandeis University.

Siddiqui's name as a potential trade for U.S. captives first emerged in back-channel negotiations that led to the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in May, said Joe Kasper, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

"On several occasions, both the Taliban and Islamic State have asked for either the release or extradition of Dr. Siddiqui in exchange for U.S. captives," said Kasper, who has been privy to communications with the militant networks.

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