Call Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin

David Raskin, Assistant U.S. Attorney

USDJ, New York, Southern District

(212) 637-2200

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Prosecutors Claim Pakistani Terror Suspect Is Faking Mental Illness

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors say a U.S.-trained scientist from Pakistan suspected of being an Al Qaeda operative is faking mental illness to avoid a trial.

Aafia Siddiqui was a global fugitive for five years until she turned up at a police station in Afghanistan over the summer and was wounded in a struggle with U.S. soldiers.

According to a complaint released in August 2008, Ms. Siddiqui, who has alleged ties to Al Qaeda, was arrested in Afghanistan in July 2008 after officers observed her loitering near a governor's compound. The complaint said a search of her handbag uncovered documents describing the production of explosives as well as chemical, biological, and radiological weapons.

The papers also included descriptions of American landmarks, including the Empire State Building in New York City.

The complaint states that an American soldier put his rifle on the floor next to him, unaware that Ms. Siddiqui was being held behind a curtain nearby. Ms. Siddiqui allegedly grabbed the gun and tried to kill the Americans in the room, but missed as they wrestled it away and shot her in the torso.

No one will speak on the record, but the implication is that Siddiqui was a suicide-bomber-in-training, and that she was under the control of terrorists during the nearly five years in which she dropped out of sight.

Psychologists initially concluded she was unfit for trial. On Thursday, an assistant United States attorney, David Raskin, told a judge in Federal District Court that the psychiatrists, each working independently and unaware of the other’s findings, concluded that the symptoms that had been seen “were attributed to malingering.”

“It was manipulation by the defendant,” Mr. Raskin told Judge Richard M. Berman, “as opposed to any signs of serious mental illness.”

According to a government document, one psychiatrist wrote that Ms. Siddiqui “has most likely fabricated reported psychiatric symptoms to give credibility to her claims that she suffers a mental disorder.”

The psychiatrist added that Ms. Siddiqui may believe a finding of incompetence “could serve to both prevent prosecution while at the same time facilitating rapid repatriation,” the document says.

Ms. Siddiqui’s lawyer, Dawn M. Cardi, said in court that she intended to retain her own experts to review the new evaluations and to examine her client. Ms. Cardi said by telephone after the hearing, “We assert that she’s not malingering.”

A hearing is planned for June 1.

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