U.S. boy in Afghan custody likely terror suspect's son

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An 11-year-old boy detained with a Pakistani woman accused of trying to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan is believed to be her son, U.S. prosecutors said in a court letter obtained on Tuesday.

U.S.-trained neuroscientist and al Qaeda suspect Aafia Siddiqui, 36, was arrested in Afghanistan in mid-July and flown to New York earlier this month to be charged with attempting to kill and assault U.S. soldiers.

U.S. prosecutors told her lawyers in a letter that preliminary DNA testing on the boy who is in Afghan custody suggests that he is Siddiqui's son. The letter dated Friday was obtained from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Lawyers said the boy is named Ahmed and a U.S. citizen because he was born in Boston.

Siddiqui disappeared from her parents' home in Karachi, Pakistan in March 2003 and resurfaced in Afghanistan. Accounts of where she has been and of her arrest and a shootout in which she was wounded differ between U.S. prosecutors, Afghan police and her lawyers.

The letter said Siddiqui's son initially told United States agents in Afghanistan that he was an orphan and his parents were dead, but DNA testing "is consistent with that of a potential offspring of Aafia Siddiqui."

Siddiqui has two other children whose location is not known. Her lawyers say the boy should be returned to relatives living in the United States or Pakistan.

"He should be returned to his biological family as soon as possible," said Siddiqui's lawyer Elaine Sharp, who said the boy's grandmother in Karachi has been searching for her daughter and three grandchildren for the past five years and "is longing to have him home."

Last Thursday the Pakistani Parliament demanded Siddiqui be returned to Pakistan. It also demanded the United States give her proper medical assistance after she was shot in the abdomen when U.S. officials say she tried to fire on a group of American troops who wanted to question her in Afghanistan's Ghazni province.

Sharp said on Tuesday that medical tests showed Siddiqui had suffered a partial loss of intestine. They are awaiting the results of a CT scan.