Activist charged with being with al-Qaida

NEW YORK, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- A former Boston student has been arrested and charged with being an al-Qaida operative who attacked U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, was called a "high security risk" by federal prosecutors, who alleged she returned to her native Pakistan in 2003 to undergo guerrilla training, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday. She was captured recently in Afghanistan, along with an unidentified teen, outside a provincial governor's compound with chemicals, maps, and documents on explosives, court papers allege.

"They were here for suicide bombing," an Afghan official in Ghazni told the Globe in a telephone interview last week. "Both of them were looking like they were prepared for suicide."

Siddiqui also is accused of shooting an M-4 rifle at U.S. investigators who had gone to interrogate her. Under those charges, she was taken to New York for trial in a wheelchair after being wounded in the earlier exchange of gunfire.

Siddiqui's attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, maintains her client is innocent and that the U.S. government had been secretly holding her prisoner for years at an unidentified location.