NEW YORK, July 29 (UPI) -- A U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist convicted of trying to kill U.S. agents in Afghanistan should get 12 years in prison rather than life, her lawyers said.
Aafia Siddiqui, 38, accused by the United States of being an al-Qaida member, was driven to her crime by mental illness, which caused her to use "any means available," the lawyers said in court papers filed in U.S. District Court in New York.
She was convicted in that court Feb. 3 of two counts of attempted murder in the July 18, 2008, attack on U.S. authorities while she was detained in an Afghan police station.
Siddiqui, who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and trained in cognitive neuroscience at Brandeis University, displayed "bizarre" behavior during the Afghan attack and later subjected the court "to frequent, nonsensical outbursts," even referring to her own testimony as "self-destructive," the lawyers said in their filing.
"What we are left with is a defendant who is clearly her own worst enemy," the filing said.
Federal prosecutors had no immediate comment.
A Pakistani Embassy spokesman in Washington said every possible effort would be made on diplomatic and legal fronts to have Siddiqui acquitted and repatriated to Pakistan, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
Siddiqui's lawyers plan to appeal her sentence, set for August or September, the spokesman said.
She is being held at New York's Metropolitan Detention Center.
