Hard-Working Pakistani Immigrant and Victim of Wave of American Islamophobia Sentenced to 86 Years

A shameful black eye on our image abroad.

A Pakistani woman trained as a scientist in the U.S. was sentenced to 86 years in prison Thursday after she was convicted of trying to kill U.S. Army soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan two years ago.

Aafia Siddiqui, 38 years old, was convicted in February of grabbing a soldier's M-4 assault rifle and trying to shoot an assembled group of Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and soldiers at an Afghan police compound in July 2008.

The U.S. team had traveled to the compound in Ghazni, Afghanistan, to interview her after she taken into custody by Afghan authorities, prosecutors said. Ms. Siddiqui was found at the time with materials that included handwritten notes referring to a "mass casualty attack" in the U.S. and listed several landmark locations in New York City, prosecutors said.

Prior to her sentencing, Ms. Siddiqui again proclaimed her innocence and disputed claims by her lawyers that she has a mental illness.

The word Muslim, naturally, is omitted from the story.

Al Qaeda 'Mata Hari' Wanted to Kill Jimmy Carter, Bush 41

Maybe a little light bulb will go off in Jimmy Carter's head. Yes, these monsters want to kill us all, even groveling appeasers like you.

Before she turned her attention to blowing up New York landmarks, the alleged al Qaeda "Mata Hari" had wild dreams of murdering former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, federal law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

MIT-educated neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui's outlandish terror schemes included plans to get Carter by poisoning the 39th president's water supply, the sources told ABC News.

It wasn't clear how she supposedly schemed to kill Bush.

Naturally, some knee-jerk lawyer, who she'd probably kill given the chance, rushes to her aid and starts reciting the usual talking points.

Lawyers for the scientist now accused of being a terrorist insist federal charges are completely bogus and said yesterday their client has been mistreated by US interrogators.

"This woman has been tortured and she needs help," said defense lawyer Elizabeth Fink.

Siddiqui's lawyers declined to elaborate on the nature of her alleged suffering, but insisted the woman - who also attended Brandeis University - has been roughed up at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for several years.

"Everything she has said is consistent with her being in Bagram for five years or more. Everything she says is consistent with being tortured in Bagram," said Elaine Whitfield Sharp, a defense lawyer hired by Siddiqui's family.

But the feds have said they picked up Siddiqui, 36, only on July 17, when she was acting suspiciously near the headquarters of the Afghanistan National Police in Ghazni province.

They found maps and plans on Siddiqui targeting Times Square, the Statue of Liberty and the New York subway system.

The FBI has been on Siddiqui's trail since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when the brainy mom of three fell off the map.

Authorities had been chasing her through information gleaned from interviews with admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. She was once married to the convicted terrorist's nephew.