Afghan National Pleads Guilty Over Islamic State Inspired Terror Plot in US
Houston, We Have a Problem
(GCV Note: First,
graciously allows me to cross publish. But you can find the original version here. Second, just because you admit that we have problems with screening doesn’t mean you believe we should kick out every Afghan. Don’t get it twisted.)On April 17, Abdullah Haji Zada, an 18-year-old Afghan citizen and legal permanent resident of the US, pled guilty to conspiring to receive firearms intended for an election-day terrorist attack in the US on behalf of the Islamic State. Zada and his co-conspirator, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, were arrested in October 2024. Zada, who was 17 at the time of his arrest, will be sentenced as an adult and faces up to 15 years in prison. He has already agreed to leave the country for Afghanistan upon his release. Both Zada and Tawhwedi lived near Oklahoma City.
Tawhedi is still awaiting trial for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State. According to press reports, Tawhedi previously worked as a security guard for the Central Intelligence Agency at an unidentified base in Afghanistan. US officials stated that his mother, who lives in Afghanistan, may have been an Islamic State sympathizer. Tawhedi entered the country in September 2021 on humanitarian parole and was eventually approved for a Special Immigrant Visa, likely for his work with the CIA, but had not completed the final necessary paperwork.
Despite undergoing multiple rounds of vetting, US officials were unable to establish any known connections to terrorist organizations, buttressing a 2021 Department of Homeland Security report that documented the difficulties DHS agents faced in properly screening refugees following the fall of Afghanistan.
A few days after Zada and Tawhedi’s arrest in the US, the Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office in Paris, France, announced the detention of an unidentified 22-year-old relative of Tawhedi for plotting a terrorist attack on a soccer match or shopping center. French authorities started their preliminary investigation into the unknown relative on September 27, a few days before Tawhedi’s arrest. Of note, French authorities foiled at least three terrorist plots targeting “Israel institutions or Israeli representatives” before the Paris 2024 Olympics. However, they were unable to prevent two car bombs from exploding outside a Synagogue in August 2024.
Zada’s guilty verdict underscores the Islamic State and its ideology’s persistent threat to the United States and US interests abroad. Since Zada and Tawhedi’s arrest, US authorities have detained six more individuals over their involvement with the group. In addition, former Army soldier Shamsud al Jabar, who conducted a domestic terrorist attack on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Day that killed 15 people, claimed to have joined the Islamic State.