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The FBI arrested a man from Afghanistan who was allegedly planning an Election Day terrorist attack in the U.S.
Federal prosecutors charged Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi with planning the attack in support of ISIS. He was arrested Monday in Oklahoma City. According to court records, he made his initial appearance in federal court Tuesday, but did not enter a plea. He remains in custody.
According to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday, Tawhedi and unnamed co-conspirators — including a juvenile who is Tawhedi’s brother-in-law — were followers of ISIS and took steps to carry out their attack in the U.S., including by trying to sell their family home, relocate their families abroad and purchase firearms and ammunition.
“Their ultimate aim was to stage a violent attack in the United States in the name of and on behalf of ISIS,” prosecutors wrote.
Twenty-seven-year-old Tawhedi traveled to the U.S. in September 2021, days after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, and the criminal complaint said he is “currently on parole status pending adjudication of his immigration proceedings.”
The complaint also said that Tawhedi came to the U.S. on a Special Immigrant Visa, but on Wednesday, a Department of Homeland Security official said that contrary to the information in the complaint, he did not have this visa.
Instead, Tawhedi was paroled into the country, like most Afghan evacuees, and allowed to live in the country temporarily under that immigration authority, the official said. He did apply for an SIV, available to those who assisted American forces, and had his case approved initially, though he never received a green card or permanent U.S. residency.
