The Afghan national charged in a plot to carry out an Election Day terror attack in the United States passed multiple background checks before being allowed to enter the country, U.S. officials told VOA.
FBI agents arrested Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on Monday, alleging he and a juvenile co-conspirator had been in contact with a recruiter for the Islamic State terror group and had been planning to die in a mass shooting.
Court documents also stated that Tawhedi hoped to relocate most of his family, including his wife and 1-year-old daughter, back to Afghanistan to live according to what he described as “pure Islam.”
However, U.S. officials, speaking to VOA on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of a case still under investigation, said Thursday that there were no indications Tawhedi was sympathetic to the Islamic State, also known as IS, ISIS or Daesh, either when he worked for the United States in Afghanistan or when he was screened immediately before to coming to the U.S. three years ago.
“Every Afghan being resettled in the United States undergoes a rigorous screening and vetting process, no matter which [U.S.] agency they worked with,” the official said.
“That process includes checking against a full range of relevant U.S. records and holdings,” the official added. “Tawhedi would not have been admitted to the United States had information of concern surfaced.”
Kinds of data
A second U.S. official told VOA that Tawhedi’s vetting included checks that involved both biometric data collected by the U.S. Department of Defense and the FBI, and classified information held by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Subsequent screenings that allowed him to be approved for a Special Immigrant Visa after he entered the U.S. also came up clean.
“Vetting is a point-in-time check that evaluates information available to the U.S. government at that time,” the official said.
The second official also said the government can take additional actions “if individuals who have entered the country are later found to be associated with information indicating a potential national security or public safety concern.”
NBC News, which first reported that Tawhedi’s background checks failed to detect any red flags, quoted sources as saying he had worked as a security guard for the CIA before being resettled in the U.S.
When reached by VOA, the CIA declined comment.
But the arrest has raised concerns among some U.S. lawmakers.
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Republican Representative Mark Green, sent a letter Wednesday to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security demanding more information.
“These recent arrests raise serious concerns about the ongoing threat that ISIS and its fanatical supporters pose to U.S. national security, as well as the shortfall in the Biden-Harris administration’s screening and vetting capabilities,” Green wrote.
“Additionally, news of these potential Afghan terrorists comes when only months ago, it was widely reported that eight Tajikistanis with ties to ISIS were arrested in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia after they had illegally crossed the border,” Green added.
The FBI confirmed receipt of Green’s letter but declined further comment.
A Homeland Security spokesperson did not comment on the letter but described the vetting process for Afghans fleeing Taliban rule as “multilayered.”
“Afghan evacuees who sought to enter the United States were subject to multilayered screening and vetting against intelligence, law enforcement and counterterrorism information,” the spokesperson told VOA in an email. “If new information emerges after arrival, appropriate action is taken.”
When was he radicalized?
But in the case of Tawhedi, questions remain.
“What’s not clear from the information currently available is exactly when Tawhedi was radicalized to the Islamic State ideology,” said Austin Doctor, the director of counterterrorism research initiatives at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center (NCITE).
“We don’t know yet whether he radicalized after arriving to the United States or if he already held pro-ISIS beliefs prior to leaving Afghanistan,” Doctor told VOA. “This matters.”
According to court documents, a search of Tawhedi’s phone and social media accounts showed he had been doing internet searches to find and consume IS propaganda, though when that started is not clear.
The earliest date for any involvement with IS, according to the criminal complaint filed Monday, is sometime around March of this year, when Tawhedi made two cryptocurrency transfers worth at least $540 to what prosecutors described as a charity that fronts for IS.
About four months later, in July, someone made a video recording – saved to Tawhedi’s phone – of Tawhedi reading to a nephew and his daughter about the rewards waiting for martyrs in the afterlife.
The first indications of a possible terror plot emerged that same month, when the FBI said Tawhedi did online searches about webcams for the White House and the Washington Monument, as well as about procuring guns.
It also remains unclear whether Tawhedi’s Islamic State contact was working for the group’s Afghan affiliate, known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K.
“We’ve seen ISIS-K make a concerted effort to recruit from diaspora communities,” NCITE’s Doctor told VOA. “And facilitating external operations and inspiring homegrown violent extremist attacks are both prominent elements of the group’s playbook.”
