Amid concerns potential terrorists can take advantage of the
U.S. refugee quota for Syrians, it may be instructive to recall the family of
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the brothers who carried out the Boston
Marathon bombing, were granted political asylum in the U.S. under a similar
program.
WND
reported last week a senior FBI official has admitted
the U.S. is finding it virtually impossible to screen out terrorists that could
be hiding among the tens of thousands of Syrian “refugees” heading soon to
American cities through the State Department’s refugee-resettlement program.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his parents came in April 2002 to the
U.S. on a 90-day tourist visa and applied for political asylum, citing fears of
persecution due to the father’s ties to Chechnya.
Tamerlan arrived in the U.S. about two years later. The
brothers’ parents received asylum and then filed petitions for their four
children, who each received “derivative asylum status.” The brothers are
charged with exploding two pressure cooker bombs during the Boston Marathon
April, 15, 2013, killing three people and injuring an estimated 264 others.
Further, with the help of President Jimmy Carter’s national
security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a high-ranking Chechen separatist leader
accused of terrorism by Russia was granted political asylum in the U.S. and
lived for a period of time in Boston.
The Chechen leader, Ilyas Akhmadov, who also served as
Chechnya’s foreign minister, insists he was falsely accused by the Kremlin.
Akhmadov was once the deputy to the radical Chechen Islamist
leader Shamil Basayev, who was killed in 2006 before being described by ABC
News as “one of the most-wanted terrorists in the world.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev traveled to Russia in January 2012 and
visited the North Caucasus, including Chechnya, where Basayev’s predecessors
continue to operate.
Shamil Basayev’s picture was reportedly found in the deleted
Instagram account of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Chechen rebel and asylum program
Akhmadov has been on Russia’s most-wanted list, charged with
organizing terrorist training camps and armed insurgent actions. Despite
Russian objections, Akhmadov now lives in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. said
it could find no links to terror.
The story surrounding Akhmadov is complicated by accusations
and counter-accusations, as well as by the support his asylum application
received from prominent political figures, including Brzezinski; Sen. John McCain,
R-Ariz.; former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Alexander Haig; and
former defense secretary Frank Carlucci.
Akhmadov received asylum from an immigration judge in
Boston. The ruling became effective in August 2004 after the Department of Homeland
Security’s abrupt withdrawal of its notice of appeal to the judge’s decision.
He also received a grant from the National Endowment for
Democracy.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say
that one of the happiest days of my life was when I called Ilyas to tell him
that he would be able to stay in America,” said Brzezinski in an interview with
his nephew, Matthew Brzezinski, who wrote an extensive
August 2004 profile of Akhmadov for the Washington Post.
Zbigniew Brzezinski also wrote the forward for Akhmadov’s
2010 book, “The Chechen Struggle: Independence Won and Lost.”
Russia: ‘He’s a terrorist’
Russia strongly opposed the asylum.
“He’s a terrorist, there is no doubt about it,” Aleksander
Lukashevich, a senior political counselor at the Russian Embassy in Washington,
told the Washington Post in 2005. “We have proof. … Our foreign minister has
made Russia’s position on extradition quite clear.”
“How would Americans feel if Russia offered sanctuary to
Osama bin Laden?” asked the Russian online newspaper Pravda.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of
hypocrisy for granting Akhmadov asylum.
“We cannot have double standards while fighting terrorism,
and it cannot be used as a geopolitical game,” Putin said.
Akhmadov was charged with organizing terrorist training
camps and leading 2,000 armed insurgents in a deadly 1999 Dagestani incursion.
Akhmadov was also once an aide to Shamil Basayev, leader of
Chechnya’s violent jihadist movement.
Basayev led the most famous Chechnya rebel attack, dubbed
the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage in 1995.
In the attack, more than 1,000 hostages were held for a
week, and 100 of them were killed when Russian forces stormed the hospital.
Russia says the hostages were mainly executed by Basayev’s men, while the
rebels claimed Russian forces killed the hostages in the firefight.
Akhmadov told Matthew Brzezinski in 2004 that he distanced
himself from Basayev after the war leader became an Islamic fundamentalist.
Akhmadov went to work at the Chechen foreign ministry.
“I found him someone whose life was dedicated to peace, not
terrorism,” Albright assured then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in a 2003
letter endorsing Akhmadov’s request for political asylum.
“I have met with Mr. Akhmadov on three occasions,” McCain
wrote to DHS. “I have found him to be a proponent of peace and human rights in
Chechnya.”
A Washington
Post editorial supporting Akhmadov’s asylum
described him as opposing the use of suicide bombings and for working for a
“negotiated peace” in his country.
Syrian refugees
The news media have reported concerns over a program to
bring to the U.S. Syrians caught up in the ongoing insurgency targeting the
regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National
Counterterrorism Center, told the House Homeland Security Committee on
Wednesday, “It’s clearly a population of concern.”
Numerous GOP lawmakers expressed fears Syrian jihadists
could take advantage of the refugee program.
Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, asserted it would
be a “huge mistake” to bring Syriam refugees from the conflict to the U.S.
Larry Bartlett, the State Department’s director of refugee
admission for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, told ABC News
that each refugee is vetted through an “intensive” system run by numerous U.S.
intelligence agencies, including the Pentagon.
However, some counter-terror analysis and lawmakers have
raised questions about the U.S. government’s ability to screen for potential
jihadists from amongst the refugees.
A letter to National Security Adviser Susan Rice signed by
McCaul and other leading Republicans warned, “The continued civil war and
destabilization in Syria undeniably make it more difficult to acquire the
information needed to conduct reliable threat assessments on specific
refugees.”
The U.S. government “cannot allow the refugee process to
become a backdoor for jihadists,” they wrote.
WND
reported a senior FBI official expressed
further concern about the ability to screen out terrorists that could be hiding
among the thousands of Syrian “refugees” heading soon to American cities.
Michael Steinbach, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s
counter terrorism unit, was questioned by McCaul at Wednesday’s House Homeland
Security Committee.
“Would bringing in Syrian refugees pose a greater risk to
Americans?” asked McCaul.
“Yes, I’m concerned,” said Steinbach. “We’ll have to go take
a look at those lists and go through all of those intelligence holdings and be
very careful to try and identify connections to foreign terrorist groups.”
In Iraq, where the U.S. maintained a large occupation force,
the U.S. government’s vetting process missed “dozens” of Iraqi jihadists who
slipped into the country posing as refugees and took up residence in Kentucky,
according to a November 2013 ABC News report.
With additional research by Joshua Klein.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/terrorists-already-hit-u-s-via-refugee-program/
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