Who is Aafia Siddiqui, Texas inmate known as 'Lady Al Qaeda'?
Fox News
A suspect who held four people hostage inside a Texas synagogue for several hours Saturday was demanding the release of a Pakistani woman named Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence in the state, according to reports.
Siddiqui, also known in counterterrorism circles as "Lady Al-Qaeda," was sentenced in 2010 after being convicted of shooting at U.S. service members in Afghanistan, authorities have said, according to the Dallas Morning News. She is being held at a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas.
She was arrested in 2008 in Afghanistan in connection with an alleged Al-Qaeda plot for a "mass casualty attack" in the U.S. and other places, authorities said, according to the Morning News. After she was taken into custody she reportedly fired at U.S. interrogators with an M4 assault rifle belonging to a U.S. Army officer.
When she was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008, she was found with documents showing to make dirty bombs, chemical weapons and the weaponization of the Ebola virus. She also had sodium cyanide on her, authorizes said.