Prosecutors: Pakistani terror suspect had notes on attacking NY sites

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
An US-educated Pakistani woman was carrying handwritten notes referring to a "mass casualty attack" and listing the Empire State Building and other New York City landmarks when she was detained in Afghanistan, prosecutors said Tuesday. In an attempted-murder indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors for the first time publicly named some of the landmarks. The others: the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge and Plum Island, a disease research complex in the Long Island Sound. Aafia Siddiqui had notes "that referred to a 'mass casualty attack"' and to "the construction of dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons and other explosives," the indictment said. "These notes also discussed the mortality rates associated with certain of these weapons and explosives." Other documents "referred to specific 'cells' and 'attacks' by certain 'cells' ... and discussed recruitment and training," the papers said. Siddiqui, who has a degree in science from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was to be arraigned Wednesday on charges she tried to assault and kill Army officers and FBI agents during an interrogation following her detention in July. The indictment alleges she picked up a soldier's rifle, announced her "desire to kill Americans" and fired the rifle but missed. She was wounded by return fire.