NEW YORK - The lawyer for Aafia Sidiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist charged with trying to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan, said her client had been mistreated while held overseas and in the United States, according to a media report. Attorney Elizabeth Fink used the word "torture" to describe what she believed Ms Siddiqui, 36, arrested last month after a shooting incident in Afghanistan, went through in Afghan and American custody. An angry Fink stated in an interview With Newsday newspaper said that Siddiqui underwent strip-searching while in US custody, which Ms Fink said was "torture" for a Muslim woman, given her religious beliefs. A spokesman for the US attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment about the case. Fink, who worked closely over the years with the late activist attorney William Kunstler, responded angrily to reports that documents found on Ms Siddiqui when she was arrested in Afghanistan contained a list of landmarks in New York City, as well as Plum Island, an animal disease centre. The FBI notified Suffolk police about Ms. Siddiqui's inclusion of the Plum Island facility on her list of purported targets back in mid-July, when she was arrested, said Suffolk Police Deputy Chief Mark White. "I haven't seen it yet," said Ms Fink of the list. "This stuff was planted on her." While some reports characterised the landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, Times Square and the subway system as "targets," one federal official briefed on the case said authorities believed the list contained no credible terrorist threat, the newspaper said. A law enforcement official who did not want to be named said federal prosecutors in Manhattan were concerned that the case against Ms Siddiqui was being oversold as a coup against terrorism, the Newsday said. "It's not clear it was even a target list," the official said. Ms Siddiqui, a mother of three, was arrested in July after she tried shooting American soldiers with a rifle she seized while she was being held at an Afghan police facility, according to a federal criminal complaint filed in Manhattan. Siddiqui was first detained after Afghan police saw her outside the compound of the governor of Ghazni Province, according to the complaint. No soldiers were hurt in the incident but Siddiqui was shot twice, officials said. A search of Ms Siddiqui before the shooting uncovered documents that described the creation of explosives, chemical, biological and radiologic weapons, court papers stated. Ms Siddiqui also had papers describing the New York City landmarks and others, the complaint stated, and chemical substances in sealed containers. At a hearing Monday, a Manhattan federal magistrate-judge ordered Siddiqui, wounded in the July 18 shooting incident, to get a physical examination within 24 hours. Her next court date was postponed until September 3. She appeared in court in a wheelchair.