Report: Family asked the U.S. to exchange 'Lady al Qaeda' for Kayla Mueller

According to a new report, last summer, the family of kidnapped aid worker Kayla Mueller wrote a letter to President Obama asking that he commute the sentence of a prisoner known as "Lady al Qaeda" in exchange for Mueller's release.

Emails obtained by The Daily Beast show that ISIS, which held the 26-year-old American hostage in Syria, gave a 30-day deadline for the U.S. to free Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence in a U.S. prison. Born in Pakistan and educated at MIT and Brandeis, the neuroscientist was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008, and allegedly had plants to make dirty bombs and weaponize Ebola. She also grabbed a gun during her interrogation and tried to shoot the American soldiers in the room with her.

The proposed swap obviously never happened, as Mueller has been confirmed dead and Siddiqui remains in a Texas prison. A National Security Council spokesperson would not comment to The Daily Beast about the letter and whether the president ever read it, and a Mueller family representative said that Kayla's parents would have "done anything they could for their daughter, as any parents would, and they thought it was worth exploring any and all options."

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