NEW YORK -- To supporters, Aafia Siddiqui is a devout Muslim, a scholar educated at MIT and Brandeis, who fled to Pakistan after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks because of anti-Muslim sentiment.

To US authorities, she is a reminder of the constant threat of terrorism, someone willing to blow up landmarks such as New York's Grand Central Terminal and the Statue of Liberty.

Aafia Siddiqui headshot, from FBI website.

Siddiqui, 36, now sits in a federal lockup in Brooklyn, nursing bullet wounds suffered in a shoot-out last month in Afghanistan. Prosecutors say she was shot by a US Army officer after she grabbed his rifle from the floor and pointed it at an Army captain, crying "Allah Akbar!"

According to an FBI affidavit, Siddiqui had been arrested a day before the shooting outside an Afghan governor's compound carrying bottles and jars of chemicals, papers describing US landmarks, and instructions on making chemical weapons.

However, the official said there doesn't appear to be evidence of a credible plot to attack any landmarks. Nonetheless, the official described her as a fanatical supporter of al-Qaida.

Siddiqui was born into a middle-class Pakistani family, one of three children of a doctor. Her brother, an architect, lives in Houston. Her sister, a Harvard-trained neurologist, lives in Karachi, Pakistan.

She came to the United States in 1990 and studied at the University of Houston and then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she got a bachelor's degree in biology in 1995. She later studied cognitive neuroscience as a graduate student at Brandeis University.

Supporters of Pakistan's Islamic party Jamat-e-Islami burn an effigy of US President George W. Bush and a US flag during a protest to show their solidarity with US-trained neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in Karachi August 17, 2008. [Agencies]

Siddiqui's Brandeis dissertation adviser, psychology professor Paul DiZio, recalled her as an intelligent, reserved woman who wore a head scarf.

"It's clear she was a woman of faith," he said. "She would describe an experiment and say 'Thanks to Allah it turned out well."'

He described her research as an examination of how people learn, nothing that would be useful to al-Qaida. "It's hard to imagine any possible connection," he said.

Another defense lawyer, Elizabeth Fink, said US authorities repeatedly cite her background in neuroscience to make it seem she might have expertise in mixing chemicals, knowledge necessary for making bombs. She said Siddiqui was actually studying cognitive science with a focus on teacher training and had hoped to return to Pakistan to teach.

In the mid-1990s,re really are real terrorists out there but she isn't one of them," she said.

Rep. Peter King, from New York and a senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, sees it differently.

"She's a dangerous person with a lot of ability. And the investigation will show how far along she may have been with any plot," he said.