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Kabul: A boy whose Pakistani mother is on trial in the United States for allegedly assaulting US personnel was handed to Pakistani officials on Monday, an Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Ali Hassan has been in Afghan custody since July, when his mother, Aafia Seddiqui, was detained outside the governor's house in Afghanistan's Gazni province.
Seddiqui, suspected of links to Al Qaida militants, was first taken to a US military base in Afghanistan then flown to New York, where she is facing charges of assault on US personnel in Gazni.
During Seddiqui's interrogation at the base she picked up a soldier's rifle, announced her "desire to kill Americans" and fired shots at US soldiers and FBI agents, the US indictment alleges. She was wounded by return fire.
Parents killed
Seddiqui's son is a dual American-Pakistani national, and was adopted by Seddiqui after his biological parents were killed in a massive earthquake that struck Kashmir in 2005, Afghanistan's foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen said.
Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Hassan arrived in Pakistan yesterday evening.
He contradicted Baheen's statement, saying the DNA tests done by US authorities showed that the boy was Seddiqui's biological son, and that he was expected to be handed over to her relatives in Pakistan.
Seddiqui, 36, went to the United States in 1990 and studied at the University of Houston and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she received a bachelor's degree in biology in 1995. She later studied neuroscience as a graduate student at Brandeis University.
She vanished in Pakistan in 2003.
In 2004, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI chief Robert Mueller III identified Seddiqui as one of seven people the FBI wanted to question about suspected ties to Al Qaida. Her family has vehemently denied any link.
Her lawyers claim that before being arrested and brought to New York, Seddiqui had been kidnapped by US operatives and kept in secret captivity in Pakistan. They said the ordeal left her with severe physical and mental problems.
US officials deny she was ever in their custody before she surfaced in Afghanistan in July.
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