WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Pakistan tried to trade a jailed CIA contractor for a suspected al-Qaida agent convicted of shooting U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, officials on both sides say.
The Americans immediately rejected the idea of freeing Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist serving 86 years for attempted murder, in return for Raymond Davis, the U.S. spy agency operative, a senior administration official told ABC News.
Pakistan has been holding Davis since he shot two men to death in Lahore Jan. 27. He claims self-defense.
Siddiqui was convicted of trying to shoot U.S. officers and FBI agents in an Afghanistan police station in 2008. She had been hunted as an al-Qaida operative since 2003 and is married to Guantanamo inmate Ammar al-Baluchi, nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.
Siddiqui has said she was held in secret American prisons, including Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, before the shooting, which U.S. officials have consistently denied.
A Pakistani official told ABC the government wanted Siddiqui transferred to Pakistan, where she would serve the remainder of her sentence in a jail or under house arrest.
She is widely viewed as a victim of persecution in Pakistan, and last year the prime minister called for her release.
