NEW YORK: Aafia Siddiqui, convicted on terrorism charges, asked a New York court on Monday that her guilty verdict should be vacated because a Manhattan Federal Court judge had forced her to accept a defence team of three lawyers paid by the Pakistani government.

The US-educated neuro-scientist was sentenced to 86 years in prison in 2010, after she testified on her own behalf.

She maintained in her court filing, Pakistan government paid the lawyers $500,000 each. It also says Pakistan was responsible for her being abducted and detained in 2003, claiming the lawyers had a conflict of interest in the case, New York Daily News paper said in a report.

“Dr Siddiqui made it abundantly clear that she had not hired them, they were not her lawyers and that they had no authority to act on her behalf,” the filing says.

The trial court’s imposition of those attorneys on Dr Siddiqui violated her rights under the Sixth Amendment.”

Ms Siddiqui was caught in 2008 in Afghanistan with poisonous chemicals, bomb-making instructions and a list of New York landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building, the paper said.

While being questioned, she grabbed a rifle and shot at American soldiers and FBI agents.

Investigators said the MIT-educated neuroscientist was radicalised after she married her second husband, whose uncle was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2014.