KABUL (Online) - Taliban militants are holding the British woman kidnapped in Afghanistan and want to exchange her for a female Pakistani scientist jailed last week in America, it has been reported. A local Taliban commander named Mohammad Osman said he had kidnapped the woman and her Afghan colleagues in Kunar province on Sunday. He told an Afghan press agency with close ties to the Taliban that he was demanding an exchange for Aafia Siddiqui, reported The Telegraph. Siddiqui, a 38-year-old neuroscientist, was jailed last week by a New York court for 86 years for the attempted murder of US agents and soldiers who were trying to interrogate her in Afghanistan. Mohammad Osman told the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), based in Peshawar in northeastern Pakistan: We are lucky that we abducted this British woman soon after the ruthless ruling by an American court on Aafia Siddiqui. We will demand the release of Aafia Siddiqui in exchange for her. British government policy is to never pay ransoms to kidnappers, but London and Washington are in contact over the report. The British embassy in Kabul would not discuss the credibility of the report or demand. A spokeswoman said: We do not discuss operational details. The Foreign Office and the family of the kidnapped woman have asked the press not to name her. She was working for the aid contractor Development Alternatives Inc, on a project paid for by the American government.