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

Kayla Mueller
(Image credit: Twitter.com/CNN Breaking News)

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.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.