Details emerge on accused al-Qaida agent

NEW YORK — A U.S.-trained scientist accused of being an al-Qaida operative was living freely in Pakistan and Afghanistan for portions of the five years before her arrest last year, a psychologist says, disputing claims that the scientist had spent those years in the custody of foreign authorities.

Newly public court documents contain reports by psychologists who treated Aafia Siddiqui after she was arrested in Afghanistan in July 2008 and was charged with taking a gun and shooting at U.S. soldiers and FBI agents. She was shot in the abdomen in the encounter.

The testimony of the mental health experts will be at issue beginning Monday at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to determine whether the 37-year-old Pakistani is competent to stand trial.

Defense lawyers for Siddiqui are challenging her competency for trial, citing the conclusions of an expert who found she is suffering from delusional disorder and depression.

Prosecutors cite reports by psychologists who say Siddiqui's behavior reflects malingering, the intentional production of grossly exaggerated psychological symptoms aimed at getting a result, such as avoiding trial.

Leslie Powers, a forensic psychologist, wrote in a document dated May 4 and put in the court's public file late Thursday that new information helps show Siddiqui was living freely in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2008.

Some of Siddiqui's supporters and her former lawyers had argued she had likely been taken into custody by foreign military intelligence authorities during those years and was subjected to torture, sexual abuse and beatings.

Siddiqui earned an undergraduate degree in biology from MIT in 1995 and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University in 2001. She left the United States in June 2002 with her three children.

Powers wrote that Siddiqui has told the FBI that she worked at the Karachi Institute of Technology in 2005, that she tried to look for her husband in Afghanistan in the winter of 2007 and that she stayed for a time in Quetta, Pakistan.

The psychologist also wrote that Siddiqui's ex-husband, Mohammad Amjad Khan, reported seeing either her or their children on several occasions in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

"While her accounts of her time are incomplete, her statements and other facts gathered seem to corroborate that she was not held captive from 2003 until 2008," Powers said.

Powers said Siddiqui was interviewed at length by the FBI for several days after her arrest on July 18, 2008.