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About/ Biography

Aafia Siddiqui graduated high school in Karachi, Pakistan. To further her education, Aafia traveled across the world to attend the University of Houston. She then later transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating from MIT, she received her Ph.D. from Brandeis in cognitive neuroscience. While at Brandeis, she studied how to aid in the learning development of children with disabilities. About a year later, Siddiqui traveled back to Pakistan. While back home, Siddiqui and her husband, Amjad Mohammed Khan, divorced while pregnant with her third child. After the birth of her third child, she found out she was put on the FBI watch list.

After her discovery, Aafia and three children left her mom's house in Karachi to travel to Islamabad to stay with her uncle. On their way to the airport, Siddiqui and her three children were kidnapped. This resulted in Aafia's disappearance from the years 2003 to 2008. Siddiqui and her oldest son reappeared in front of the Governor's building in Ghazni, Afghanistan, in 2008 with a bag of suspicious items that were given to her. Both she and her son were arrested and separated. Siddiqui was put into a room with American and Afghani officials where she allegedly attempted to shoot at the officials with an M-4. No one but Siddiqui was injured; she left the room that day with two gunshots in her stomach. From there, she was taken to New York for her two-year-long trial. In 2010, she was sentenced to 86 years in prison and is currently serving out her sentence in a medical prison in Texas because of her deteriorating mental health and her sustained physical injuries. 

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