New Delhi: US intelligence officials are interrogating a Pakistani woman for her alleged involvement in moving al-Qaida funds and helping out with logistics planning of the terrorist outfit, according to Western reports.

The woman, identified as 31-year old Aafia Siddiqui, was arrested in Karachi recently after she returned from an overseas trip last month, reports in the 'Boston Globe' and Oklahama (TV) news channel's website said.

Siddiqui, against whom Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had issued a worldwide alert notice, is a doctorate on neurological science and a mother of three children. An alumna of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she used to live in Boston with her spouse, the reports said.

The woman is alleged to have "moved money for al-Qaida operatives and was also involved with radical groups in Pakistan, particularly in the Northwest Frontier Province". She was picked up from a relative's home after being tailed from Karachi's Qaid-e-Azam international airport.

The reports said Siddiqui was being interrogated "at an undisclosed location, but intelligence sources said she is yet to be charged with any crime".

Quoting American intelligence sources, the reports said she was "essentially in the hands of the FBI now", adding that the sources refused to reveal whether she had been flown out of Pakistan for interrogation.

The reports also quoted an Arabic newspaper as saying that al-Qaida had set up training camps to train women to "become martyrs" by carrying out suicide attacks. The women's wing is headed by a self-proclaimed person called 'Umm Osama' or the 'Mother of Osama'.

PTI