NEW YORK: The Obama administration and former US government officials are intrigued by continued demands by extremist Islamic groups and the government of Pakistan to release Aafia Siddiqui.

However, some Pentagon officials have considered asking White House to pardon her and arrange her release, the Foreign Policy magazine said in an article.

The article claims that “a group of senior US national security officials received a tantalising proposal from officials in Pakistan — if the United States would release a Pakistani woman (Aafia Siddiqui) in exchange for US Army Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, who had been missing since 2009 and was thought to be held in Pakistan by Taliban forces.”

“We are aware of at least one entity in the Defence Department that has developed possible options to trade Siddiqui. And we can say with certainty that the option was weighed for Bergdahl and several others in captivity,” said Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Rep Duncan Hunter (R.-Calif.), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and a former Marine who has criticised the Obama administration for not doing more to free American prisoners, the writer Shane Harris said in the article.

Although US officials never seriously considered trading Ms Siddiqui, she has been a perennial bargaining chip for terrorists and Islamist militants who’ve made her release a condition for freeing a number of American and European prisoners over the years. The militants had repeatedly threatened to execute Bergdahl if Siddiqui wasn’t set free.

A heated debate over whether the US government should pay ransom or conduct prisoner swaps in order to free American captives erupted after Foley’s murder.

The United States, unlike many European countries, doesn’t pay ransoms. Some terrorism experts say that Americans are less likely to be kidnapped as a result. But some former prisoners and their families want the government to pay ransom if doing so will free Americans.

Shane Harris says the White House has steadfastly refused to put Siddiqui’s release on the table in negotiating for American prisoners, a team inside the Defence Department has proposed trading her for American captives, according to a US lawmaker.

And yet Bergdahl, for whom swapping Siddiqui was at least briefly considered, was ultimately freed in May in exchange for five high-ranking Taliban prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. That deal was criticised as a concession to militant groups and as a potential security risk.

US intelligence agencies two years ago concluded that those prisoners would eventually return to hostilities against the United States, according to a former senior official who helped write the assessment.

Current and former officials have said that trading the “Taliban 5” for Bergdahl was in line with the tradition of exchanging prisoners in war time and part of a broader effort to enter into peace negotiations with the Taliban to end fighting in Afghanistan.

The Siddiqui option in Bergdahl’s case never reached Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel. “That’s a real shame, because right or wrong on trading Siddiqui, all valid options should be explored and exhausted,” he said.

Senior administration officials said they were unaware of any proposal by a Pentagon unit to offer Siddiqui’s freedom as part of hostage negotiations. And acquiescing is legally complicated, experts said.

President Barack Obama would possibly have to pardon Siddiqui or commute her sentence because the United States and Pakistan don’t have a treaty allowing Pakistanis incarcerated in the States to serve out their sentences back home.

Experts said that the administration could probably have fashioned some solution, but doing so would have opened the White House to criticism that it was directly negotiating with terrorists.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2014