Washington — The Afghan nationwide charged with planning an Election Day terror assault was beforehand employed in a safety position in Afghanistan by the CIA, CBS Information has confirmed.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who was arrested Monday in Oklahoma Metropolis, is accused of planning the assault on behalf of ISIS.
Tawhedi together with unnamed co-conspirators — together with a juvenile who’s Tawhedi’s brother-in-law — took a number of steps to hold out the assault within the U.S., together with promoting their household house and their belongings and have been within the technique of relocating their household overseas and buying firearms and ammunition, in response to a felony grievance unsealed Tuesday.
Twenty-seven-year-old Tawhedi traveled to the U.S. in September 2021, days after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. He was initially paroled into the U.S. on Sept. 9, 2021, and presently has a pending software for lawful everlasting resident standing based mostly upon an permitted petition for a Particular Immigrant Visa, in response to a Division of Homeland Safety official.
The U.S. provides Particular Immigrant Visas to people who labored with its armed forces or underneath chief of mission authority as a translator or interpreter in both Iraq or Afghanistan, in response to the State Division.
“Each Afghan being resettled in america undergoes a rigorous screening and vetting course of irrespective of which U.S. authorities company they labored with,” a U.S. official informed CBS Information. “That course of contains checking in opposition to a full vary of related U.S. information and holdings.”
The CIA declined to remark. NBC Information first reported Tawhedi’s employment on the CIA.
Federal investigators allege that Tawhedi looked for entry to surveillance and safety cameras situated in Washington, D.C., and checked webcams displaying the White Home and Washington Monument in late July. In addition they imagine Tawhedi was in search of out locations during which gun legal guidelines have been extra lax.
Tawhedi and his brother-in-law obtained two AK-47 rifles on Monday, shortly earlier than their arrest, in response to the felony grievance.
In an interview with investigators after his arrest, Tawhedi mentioned they’d bought the weapons to hold out an assault on Election Day and goal massive gatherings of individuals, throughout which they “anticipated to be martyred,” the grievance says.
Tawhedi, who stays in custody, is scheduled to look in court docket on Oct. 17 for a detention listening to.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez
contributed to this report.
