Mushahid, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told a press conference in New York on Wednesday evening that Dr. Siddiqui, a U.S.-educated Pakistani neuroscientist, wanted the case against her dropped and she wished to be returned to Pakistan.

Ms. Siddiqui, 36, who was shot in the abdomen by U.S. agent after she allegedly grabbed an American soldier’s gun during questioning in July, was brought to New York on August 4 to face charges of attempted murder and assault.

Mushahid, who met her for 2 hours 45 minutes at at Carswell Medical Centre in a military prison compound at Fort Worth near Dallas, Texas, said Ms. Siddiqui told them she had no faith in the U.S. courts hearing her case.

She is presently held at the centre for psychiatric evaluation to determine if she was fit to stand trial.

The four-member Pakistani delegation included Senators Mushahid Hussain, SM Zafar, Muhammad Talha Mahmood and Saadia Khaqqan Abbasi.  They were accompanied by Iftikhar Babar, secretary of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Faqir Asif Hussain, a counsellor at the Pakistan embassy in Washington.

Mushahid described as a “good gesture” the US government’s move to allow the Pakistani delegation to meet Dr. Siddiqui.

They met Aafia without the presence of any US official, and she was also permitted to sit next to them, instead of being separated by a partition, as is normally the case.

“She seemed calm and composed, but she suffers from memory losses,” Mushahid said, adding that she she has been “through living hell.”

Dr. Siddiqui also told the Pakistani delegation that she was tortured during her incarceration.

“We feel she should be unconditionally released and repatriated to Pakistan,” he said, adding that she has suffered enough. “This would be a good gesture by the United States and would go a long way to improve relations between the people of Pakistan and the United States. “This has become a litmus test,” Mushahid added.

Answering a number of questions about who kidnapped her in Karachi in 2003 and where she has spent the last five years, he said there were some “gray areas” but they were told that she was held at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

A U.S. judge entered a plea of innocent last month on behalf of Ms. Siddiqui who prosecutors say may be unfit to face charges of trying to kill U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan.

Ms. Siddiqui’s September 4 arraignment at Manhattan federal court was delayed after she refused to submit to a strip search, a security procedure requiring inmates to undress and squat in front of guards.

In a letter to the judge, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia has said that there was reason to believe Siddiqui, who has refused to cooperate with prison doctors, is suffering from a mental disease and is unfit to stand trial.

Ms. Siddiqui’s lawyer, Elizabeth Fink had asked the judge that her client be placed in a hospital for medical and psychological care and be treated as someone who may have been the victim of torture.

Human rights groups had declared Ms. Siddiqui missing for five years before the incident in July, when she was arrested outside the governor’s office in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province.

U.S. officials say police found documents in her handbag on making explosives, excerpts from the book “Anarchist’s Arsenal” and descriptions of New York City landmarks. He lawyers say that those documents were planted.