KARACHI, Pakistan — The tabloids called her Lady Qaeda. A neuroscientist who was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was accused of trying to kill American soldiers and plotting to blow up the Statue of Liberty. Since then, Aafia Siddiqui has spent almost 12 years in a federal prison in Texas.
Now, investigators are looking into whether her story may have motivated the British attacker who took four people hostage at a Texas synagogue on Saturday. Since Ms. Siddiqui’s conviction in 2010 for “terroristic events” in Afghanistan, her name has become a rallying cry among Islamists in her native Pakistan, and her defiance in the face of arrest has made her a hero to jihadist militants worldwide, experts said.
“Her rejection of mainstream life makes her an empowering example for the jihadi groups who exploit her victimhood,” said Abdul Basit, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
The F.B.I. said on Sunday that the attacker, Malik Faisal Akram, spoke of Ms. Siddiqui’s case, which has been used as a pretext for previous terrorist attacks and has also garnered renewed focus since American forces withdrew from Afghanistan last summer. In October, hundreds of people marched to the U.S. Consulate in the port city of Karachi to demand that the Biden administration order her release.
Ms. Siddiqui, 49, is serving an 86-year sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Fort Worth, about 24 miles southwest of...
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