Report:1st woman al-Qaida suspect detained

WASHINGTON, April 22 (UPI) -- A woman with suspected links to al-Qaida has been arrested in Pakistan, NBC News reported Tuesday, although Pakistani officials said they didn't know of any such arrest.

Aafia Siddiqui, a former Boston resident, is wanted for questioning by the FBI. Her mother, Ismat Siddiqui, said her daughter disappeared from her hiding place in Karachi 10 days ago. She said that FBI and Pakistani officials she contacted told her that they had no information about their daughter's whereabouts.

Pakistan's Interior Secretary Tasneem Noorani told United Press International that Pakistani authorities were not aware of her arrest.

"The issue was also raised in the (Pakistani) parliament but we have no knowledge of the arrest," Noorani told UPI in a telephone interview.

The FBI recently issued a worldwide search notice for Aafia Siddiqui, the first woman the federal agency has accused of actively helping Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Bin Laden is the Saudi exile suspected of being the mastermind behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Siddiqui's family sources say that Aafia Siddiqui had been traveling across Pakistan to evade FBI agents. In the past few weeks that she has been in Pakistan, she has lived in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar, regularly changing her residence to avoid arrest, the sources said.

Noorani, however, did acknowledge that the Bush administration was seeking the extradition of several people of Pakistani origin. They include Siddiqui, who is now a U.S. citizen.

"We are looking for her but so far we have no information about her," said Noorani.

Siddiqui's mother she has spoken to officials in Lahore and Islamabad about her daughter's whereabouts but no one gave her satisfactory information. She told a recent news conference in Karachi that though the government had denied the arrest of her daughter, recently an unknown man came to her house and informed her that her daughter was safe. He directed her not to make "too much noise about Aafia if you want her to return home safely." He also threatened her that if she made the matter public, her daughter would meet the "same fate as Asif Bhuja met," she said.

Asif Bhuja was a suspect in abduction and murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, and was found dead when police reached his home to question him.

Ismat Siddiqui said in the last week of March that Aafia Siddiqui, after a domestic quarrel, left her home in Karachi along with her three children. Later, Aafia Siddiqui called her to say that she was going to Rawalpindi to meet her friend from where she would move to her uncle's house in Lahore.

But Aafia Siddiqui never reached her destination. Ismat Siddiqui believes that her daughter was not picked up by the FBI or Pakistani law enforcement agencies as some top leaders of the ruling party, the PML-QA and police high-ups have assured her that Aafia Siddiqui was not in their custody.

"I trust what they say," she said adding that Aafia Siddiqui's brother, Mohammed Ali Siddiqui, hired a lawyer in the United States to collect information regarding Aafia Siddiqui 's whereabouts, but the U.S. authorities reportedly told him that Aafia Siddiqui was not in their custody.

Ismat Siddiqui appears to believe her son-in-law, Majid A. Khan may have abducted Aafia Siddiqui "as they had major problems." The family also seems to believe that he "provided concocted evidence" to give to the FBI.

Ismat Siddiqui said that Aafia Siddiqui did a doctoral thesis on "The Status of Women in Islam" and she received a number of awards from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. She said her daughter was very religious. She expressed ignorance when she was informed that the FBI wanted her daughter for questioning.

Although her whereabouts are unknown, the FBI believes she is in Pakistan. The agency claims she's a "fixer" who moves money to provide logistical support for terrorist activities. She is also linked to radicals in Pakistan, it added.