The Plight of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

An American-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist who was convicted of assault with intent to murder her U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan. The charges carried a maximum sentence of life in prison; in September 2010, she was sentenced by a United States district court to 86 years in prison. Siddiqui entered the United States on a student visa in 1990. Staying for both undergraduate and graduate education, she eventually settled in Massachusetts and earned her PhD in neuroscience from Brandeis University in 2001.

A devout Muslim who had engaged in Islamic charity work, Siddiqui moved back to Pakistan in 2002. She disappeared with her three young children in March 2003, shortly after the arrest in Pakistan of her second husband's uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged chief planner of the September 11 attacks.