A US judge on Wednesday ordered further psychiatric evaluation for a Pakistani woman he says is mentally incompetent to stand trial on charges of attempted murder of US officers in Afghanistan.

Judge Richard Berman told the federal court in New York that Aafia Siddiqui, a US-educated neuroscientist extradited in August from Afghanistan, is `not currently competent to proceed.`

Judging from an initial medical report, `the course of treatment should continue,` he said.

Siddiqui, 36, is in custody at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.

Her lawyer, Elizabeth Fink, told the court that Siddiqui is `hallucinating` about her family.

`She believes she lives with two of the children,` Fink said.

One of those children is in fact dead and the other has disappeared, Fink said. The only child certainly living, a 12-year-old boy, does not feature in his mother`s hallucinations at the Texas facility, Fink said.

Siddiqui`s condition has thrown into doubt an already controversial case.

Prosecutors say Siddiqui was arrested in July by Afghan police, then tried to kill US army and FBI officers while in custody, but was shot and wounded herself.

She is charged with attempted murder. Despite repeated suggestions by officials and US media that she is linked to Al-Qaeda and possessed details of US targets when arrested, she is not accused of terrorism.

The defense says Siddiqui is an innocent victim of a dirty war run by US and allied agents and was secretly incarcerated for five years prior to the alleged incident in July.

Berman said that no decision would be taken on how to proceed -- including the possibility that Siddiqui could be medicated so that she could stand trial -- until her state was better understood.

He said more needed to be revealed about the claim that Siddiqui was illegally held and tortured between 2003 and 2008.

`I would like to know the answer to that as well. Certainly it has a bearing on the clinical treatment... and the issue of competence,` Berman said.

Prosecutor David Raskin said there was `not a shred of evidence` that Siddiqui had been in the hands of US or allied forces in Pakistan or Afghanistan prior to her arrest.

`I can say to the court we have found zero evidence that Ms Siddiqui was abducted, tortured -- any of the things we hear repeated.`

Raskin said that Siddiqui`s unexplained disappearance during that period more logically suggested that she was an Al-Qaeda agent who `went underground.`

Fink says Siddiqui was probably seized by Pakistani intelligence in 2003 and may have been subjected to horrific treatment before being flown to the United States.

Siddiqui`s 12-year-old son, who was arrested with her in Afghanistan, is now back at the family home in Karachi, but is `seriously disturbed,` Fink said.