NEW YORK, Aug 14: Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist dubbed as the “terrorist Mata Hari” by US intelligence officials, when arrested in Afghanistan last month allegedly had in her possession list of potential targets in New York, including the animal disease centre on Plum Island, detailed chemical, biological and radiological weapon information that has been seen only in a handful of terrorist cases, as well as a thumb drive packed with emails, ABC News said on Wednesday.

That haul of information has led multiple government sources to describe Ms Siddiqui, a 36 years old MIT graduate, as a potential “treasure trove” of information on terrorist supporters, sympathisers or ‘sleepers’ in the United States and overseas.

When nabbed by a team of Afghanistan National Police officers on July 17, she also had in her possession a one gigabyte digital media storage device – a thumb drive – whose contents included a large trail of emails that authorities are now poring over, sources said. Those e-mails, a source involved in the investigation said, are between “what she described as ‘units’ and what we would call ‘cells’, the news network said.“She is the most significant capture in five years”, a former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who said she lives up to her reputation as an alleged terrorist ‘Mata Hari’.

And there is an eagerness to see what, if anything, she can add to the thin trickle of fresh information on the activities of terrorists and terrorist supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as what if any risk she might pose to national security.By the time of Siddiqui’s capture last month, she had become something of a cause celebre among some human rights activists who believe she was “disappeared” five years ago by the Pakistani government, perhaps at the request of the US.

At a federal court hearing in Manhattan on Monday, the number of supporters who showed up required the US Marshals to move the Magistrate’s Court proceeding to a larger courtroom and also open an overflow courtroom where spectators could listen to and watch the proceedings on closed circuit TV.

Only a “handful” of captured alleged Al Qaeda associates have had the kind of detailed information on weapons of mass destruction that Siddiqui, who attended MIT as an undergraduate and earned her PhD in neuroscience at Brandeis, had in her handbag, multiple current and former US intelligence and law enforcement officials told ABC news.

“She is a very dangerous person, no doubt about it”, said a senior US counter terrorism official.

“This is a major haul, a major capture for the FBI, said Kiriakou. “To find someone who has such rich information, computer hard drives, emails, that is really a major capture”. US authorities are analysing Siddiqui’s saliva, hair, and fingernail scrapings to determine, if possible, what evidence they can find of any exposure to chemical, biological or radiological materials with potential use in weapons of mass destruction, sources said.

Among her papers were found maps and information concerning potential targets in New York City that sources say included the subway, Times Square and the Statue of Liberty, ABC News has learned. She also carried excerpts from “The Anarchist’s Arsenal” and “documents detailing United States military assets”, according to the federal complaint against her filed on July 31 in Manhattan.

ABC News sources alleged that she also had information indicating the possibility of “an attack” on Plum Island Disease Centre, a secure US government facility off the tip of Long Island, New York where research into foot and mouth disease, swine fever and other animal pathogens is conducted by the Department of Agriculture and security is provided by the Department of Homeland Security.

According to ABC news, US intelligence community’s interest in Ms Siddiqui is in itself not new. On May 26, 2004, she became the first woman wanted by the federal government in connection with Al Qaeda when the Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller asked the public’s help in finding her and six men suspected of links to Al Qaeda.