NEW YORK, June 2: Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman sought by the US government, was not an Al Qaeda operative and might be dead or detained in Pakistan or the United States, a lawyer for the family told a press conference in Boston on Tuesday.
The lawyer, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, said that "her family does not believe she is involved in any nefarious or sinister act connected to Al Qaeda or any other sadistic terrorist group."
Ms Siddiqui, 33, a cognitive behavioural scientist who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University outside Boston, was divorced by her husband Muhammad Amjad Khan, a former Boston doctor who now lives in Pakistan.
"Her mother, Ismat Siddiqui, was the last to see her as she and her three children got in a cab in Karachi in late February or early March and was not seen since," Ms Sharp said.
Asked whether Ms Siddiqui's family lodged a report with Pakistani police on her disappearance, Ms Sharp replied: "Not that I know of." However, she debunked reports that Ms Aafia Siddiqui's family ever contacted Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat or that he talked to them before now. "The American media recorded it as it were a fact," she noted.
Ms Sharp said that Ms Aafia had job offers from John Hopkins University and New York's State University (SUNY). She had travelled to the United States in late 2002 for interviews with these institutions, in a bid to sustain her family after her divorce.
Reuters quoted Ms Sharp as saying that Ms Siddiqui could have been kidnapped by her husband. Ms Sharp denied having made such a statement saying "Aafia's family does not want to say any such thing." "I am outraged with Reuters story, " Ms Sharp told Dawn.
At Brandeis, Ms Siddiqui studied how the brain used visual cues and memory to learn new tasks. The goal of the research was to help children with learning disabilities, Ms Sharp told Dawn. FBI has described Ms Siddiqui as an Al Qaeda operative and facilitator and said she was one of seven sought in connection with "possible terrorist threats" in the United States.
Ms Sharp said that the Siddiqui family maintained that there were no connections between Aafia and Al Qaeda and wanted to correct the "misinformation widespread in the media". There were no family members at the press conference. Ms Siddiqui has a brother in Houston but her mother lives in Karachi. The father is dead.
