Update: There is a 2013 ABC News expose of the arrest and conviction of these two refugees with information on how they lied to get into the US. A long time reader suggested that many of you may never have seen it. Watch it here.
He says he was misrepresented and didn’t understand English well enough (you can be sure he had been supplied with a translator!).
For you, in new towns being urged to ‘welcome the stranger’ and take in Muslim refugees, there are several lessons in this one short news story.
First, don’t believe them when they say that refugees are thoroughly screened! This pair of convicted terrorists LIED on their refugee applications and there was ample evidence, one not mentioned in this news story, that they were in fact fighting (and possibly killing) Americans in Iraq. One of them had fingerprints on an IED shard the US had already collected from an attack on Americans.
Second, US and state taxpayers are footing the bill for translators and expensive trials and other legal proceedings.
And, third these two were placed by a resettlement contractor in an American town and you paid for it. But, the media, in this case AP, cannot bring itself to tell readers that these two were REFUGEES.
Every reader of this AP story who is unfamiliar with the US Refugee Admissions Program is probably scratching their head and asking, well how did these terrorists get in here?
From AP at the Bowling Green Daily News (hat tip: Robin):
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — An Iraqi man convicted of terrorism charges in Kentucky is asking a federal judge to change his conviction and prison sentence because he says he was misrepresented by his court-appointed attorney.
Mohanad Shareef Hammadi pleaded guilty in 2012 to being involved in a plot to send weapons and money to al-Qaida in Iraq.
Hammadi says in a motion filed last month that he felt pressure to plead guilty to a dozen charges and was told by his attorney, James Earhart, he would not get a life sentence. He is asking a judge to throw out or correct the sentence.
The motion asks the court to “vacate, set aside or correct” the conviction and life sentence he received in January 2013.
[….]
Hammadi said in the motion that he was pressured to plead guilty the day before his jury trial. Earhart, a longtime lawyer and former federal prosecutor in Kentucky, told Hammadi “no American jury would find him innocent following the events of Sept. 11, 2001,” according to the March 16 motion.
The AP wants you to think that they just simply “arrived” in the US, not a word about the US State Department bringing them in!
Alwan and Hammadi arrived in the United States in 2009. Both admitted to taking part in insurgent activities in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. Prosecutors said federal authorities became aware of Alwan when they found out he had been held in an Iraqi prison in June 2006 for insurgent activities.
Searching RRW for ‘Kentucky Iraqi’ I see that we probably have a couple of dozen posts in which we mention these convicted refugee terrorists. In fact, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s fleeting criticism of the refugee program was surely inspired by his anger at the time about this case.
If you see Rand Paul on the campaign trail, ask him why he stopped criticizing the Refugee Admissions Program!
Make this issue a 2016 Presidential campaign issue! In fact, ask all of the candidates if they support it and I bet you get a ‘deer in the headlights’ look!