Kentucky: Convicted Iraqi refugee terrorist wants chance to withdraw guilty plea

10/27/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Longtime readers may remember the case of two Iraqi refugees resettled in Senator Rand Paul’s hometown of Bowling Green (see our extensive coverage of the diversity jungle created by resettlement contractors that is B.G. today by clicking here).

We covered the arrest and trial of the Iraqi pair over the years (go here for an archive on the case).

Perhaps one of the most shocking revelations, and evidence of very shoddy processing of refugees, was the fact that at least one of the Iraqi’s fingerprints was found on fragments of an IED that killed American National Guard troops.

Here is the latest from Kentucky.com thanks to reader Robin:

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — An Iraqi man convicted in a Kentucky terrorism case has asked a federal judge to give him access to his complete case file so he can try to withdraw his guilty plea.

U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell had not ruled on the request from 26-year-old Mohanad Shareef Hammadi as of Friday morning.

Hammadi and 33-year-old Waad Ramadan Alwan pleaded guilty in 2010 and 2011 to taking part in a plot to ship thousands of dollars in cash, machine guns, rifles, grenades and shoulder-fired missiles from Bowling Green, Kentucky, to al-Qaida in Iraq in 2010 and 2011. The pair was working with an FBI informant who squelched their plans.

Alwan is serving a 40-year sentence and Hammadi are serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

In a letter to his court-appointed attorney that was filed in the court record, Hammadi said he wanted to review the records to file motions to attack his guilty plea before the statute of limitations runs out.

By the way, I would love to see the US State Department made responsible for legal fees incurred by the refugees they let in to the country. And, just imagine what this pair’s incarceration will cost the US taxpayer for the next forty plus years! So much for refugees bringing economic benefits—these two imprisoned refugees will likely offset the small economic benefit of thousands and thousands of non-criminal refugees.

And, don’t forget, right now Iraqis are the top group of refugees we are resettling in your towns and cities, here.

For ambitious readers, we have a huge category on Iraqi refugees, here, with 635 previous posts!

NY Times: Obama security screening fix will first help those aliens already here

02/09/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Convicted Iraqi refugee terrorists got through old screening system and yet Obama now makes it even easier to get through!

Everyone is talking about it—the Obama Administration’s relaxation of security screening regulations originally put in place after 9/11. As we have reported, here***, the “refugee resettlement contractors” were lobbying hard for the rule change because they want to get thousands of Syrians admitted to the US this fiscal year partly because they are embarrassed that the US has not stepped-up to open our “welcoming” doors, and partly because they are paid by the head to bring ’em in.

Even the New York Times is talking about it (those bad ol’ Republican spoil-sports!):

Republican lawmakers are assailing new exemptions from antiterrorism laws the Obama administration issued this week for war zone refugees seeking to come to the United States, saying the rules are examples of unilateral action by President Obama that weaken immigration security.

The administration, under pressure to respond to the crisis of more than 2.3 million Syrians who have fled the civil war in their country, published two rules on Wednesday that will exempt refugees from provisions banning terrorists. The exemptions apply if the refugees provided only minor material support, such as meals or medical aid, to armed groups that have not been officially designated as terrorist organizations, or if they gave such support under pressure. [That old sandwich canard! Can you imagine a prospective refugee admitting that he/she gave a “sandwich to a rebel” at one time?—ed]

[…..]

“We are a nation of laws, and the executive branch should not be allowed to unilaterally suspend our immigration laws to provide benefits to those who have supported terrorists,” said John Cornyn of Texas, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration.

Administration officials and refugee advocates said the rules were a badly needed fix to sweeping antiterrorism laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

By the way, even the screening in place before last week didn’t keep those Iraqi refugee terrorists who went to Kentucky out of the US. Maybe the rules needed strengthening not weakening!

Then get this! The NYT says 3,000 are asylum seekers!

That means they have already entered the US illegally by coming across one of our borders or over-staying a visa! And, at minimum 70% could be fraudulent!

Officials said the exemptions, which would immediately affect some 3,000 asylum applicants, had been in the works for years.

***Check out the contractor Senate testimony—the Lutherans want 12,000 Syrians this year and the Catholics want 15,000 (no mention of favoring Christians!). It is always a shock to new readers when they learn that Lutherans and Catholics are resettling Muslims in their towns and cities.

Nightline Exclusive worth watching! Dozens of Terrorists Could Live in US as Refugees

11/22/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Waada Alwan and Mohanad Hammadi. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Marshal’s Service)

Until this morning, I didn’t have the time to watch the Nightline Exclusive about how those two Iraqi refugee terrorists, arrested in Bowling Green, KY in 2011, were exposed.

It is really a fascinating piece if you haven’t watched it.

We reported the ABC News report on the story here, two days ago.

Go here to watch the whole thing! The investigation is continuing into whether there are others like Waada Alwan and Mohanad Hammadi who got into the US with American blood on their hands after checking boxes on their refugee application that they had not been part of any terrorist action in Iraq.

We have written an awful lot on the case, if you type ‘Kentucky Iraqi terrorists’ into our search function, most of those earlier reports should be archived with those key words.

By the way, I noticed in the Nightline piece that there was some consternation by officials interviewed about why Bowling Green. Bowling Green is a preferred refugee resettlement site for the US State Department and its nine federal contractors and has been for probably two decades.

How does a city become “preferred?” First, it has to have some big companies nearby in need of cheap labor (chicken processing in this case), available public housing, and then it must have a low number on the squawk index! What is that you ask? That’s my terminology for whether there develops a cadre citizens in the community who ask what the heck is happening to our city? No (or little) squawking=more refugees will be resettled there!

For new readers: We have admitted to the US 19,491 Iraqis in fiscal year 2013 alone!

Photo is from this story from the Courier-Journal on the pair’s indictment.

EEEK! Could there be terrorists in the Iraqi population in the US?

11/20/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You betcha! I am continually amazed at how long it takes the mainstream media to catch up with the blogosphere. I don’t want to brag, but heck we wrote about this now old news way back in June of 2011.

Senator Rand Paul has been asking from day one why are we permitting so many Iraqis into the US. ABC doesn’t mention his name.

And, it cannot go unmentioned—-Senator Rand Paul was, and still is, the only US Senator I’ve seen in the last 6 years to have the guts to ask why the h*** are we doing this?

See here for just one of many posts about Paul’s demands for answers about how this Kentucky case happened. Isn’t it interesting that this lengthy ABC News investigation doesn’t even mention his name!

ABC has moved the story to the front pages (nearly 2 and 1/2 years late!) and after we have admitted 90,000 Iraqis in ten years and 19,491 in fiscal year 2013 alone!

Let me repeat!

We have admitted 19,491 Iraqi refugees to the US in 2013 alone!

Thanks to all who sent the story today, including Judy who sent former Rep. Allen West’s post on the story and Brenda Walker at Limits to Growth for her write-up. Walker has been on top of the story from day one as well!

Good Morning America: Exclusive: US May Have Let ‘Dozens’ of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees

Several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers, including some believed to have targeted American troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the United States as war refugees, according to FBI agents investigating the remnants of roadside bombs recovered from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky — who later admitted in court that they’d attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq — prompted the bureau to assign hundreds of specialists to an around-the-clock effort aimed at checking its archive of 100,000 improvised explosive devices collected in the war zones, known as IEDs, for other suspected terrorists’ fingerprints.

“We are currently supporting dozens of current counter-terrorism investigations like that,” FBI Agent Gregory Carl, director of the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC), said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News’ “World News with Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline”.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were many more than that,” said House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul. “And these are trained terrorists in the art of bombmaking that are inside the United States; and quite frankly, from a homeland security perspective, that really concerns me.”

As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News …. [But, of course the refugee agencies and their contractors are making up now for lost time. Iraqis were the largest group of refugees resettled in 2013.—ed]

The now imprisoned pair were resettled in Kentucky:

In 2009 Alwan applied as a refugee and was allowed to move to Bowling Green, where he quit a job he briefly held and moved into public housing on Gordon Ave., across the street from a school bus stop, and collected public assistance payouts, federal officials told ABC News.

“How do you have somebody that we now know was a known actor in terrorism overseas, how does that person get into the United States? How do they get into our community?” wondered Bowling Green Police Chief Doug Hawkins, whose department assisted the FBI.

One of the saddest parts of this whole story is that these creeps may well have helped themselves to American welfare after killing American soldiers from Pennsylvania:

The FBI secretly taped Alwan bragging to the informant that he’d built a dozen or more bombs in Iraq and used a sniper rifle to kill American soldiers in the Bayji area north of Baghdad.

“He said that he had them ‘for lunch and dinner,'” recalled FBI Louisville Supervisory Special Agent Tim Beam, “meaning that he had killed them.”

Read the whole ABC story for details. Most regular readers will note that we reported most of this “exclusive” story over the last couple of years.

This is our 596th post on Iraqi refugees, click here for the entire archive.

For first timers, who have no clue what ‘refugee resettlement’ is, go here for our fact sheet on how the program works. Also, Bowling Green is a preferred resettlement site for the contractors. Type ‘Bowling Green’ into our search function and learn more about the problems there over the years.

Senator Rand Paul: ‘Immigration reform’ must include improved security measures

05/31/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Paul: Refugee program deserves more scrutiny!

After reading the opening paragraphs of Paul’s op-ed in the Washington Times today, one might think Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has been reading RRW! All of the cases he cites have been reported on these pages!

A recent Quinnipiac poll in Iowa puts Paul only 4 points behind Hillary while Rubio gets trounced by her 48% to 37%. Politico

Fazliddin Kurbanov is from Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country that borders Afghanistan. This month, Mr. Kurbanov was arrested in Boise, Idaho, charged with teaching people how to build bombs that could be used to target public transportation. He is accused of conspiring with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the United States recognizes as a terrorist organization. Mr. Kurbanov was here legally, admitted as a refugee in 2009.

Last year, in Aurora, Colo., Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested and charged with providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, which the United States recognizes as a terrorist organization. Like Mr. Kurbanov, Mr. Muhtorov is from Uzbekistan and was also here legally as a refugee.

In 2011, in my hometown of Bowling Green, Ky., Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were arrested and accused of supporting efforts to kill American troops in Iraq. Both men are from Iraq. Both were also here legally as refugees.

The Bowling Green Daily News reported that these Iraqi refugees “slipped through the vetting process that allowed both of them political asylum in the United States.” Apparently, Mr. Kurbanov and Mr. Muhtorov “slipped through” as well.

Read on. Then this:

I condemn government inefficiency and incompetence often. The targets for criticism are endless. In the repeating patterns from these refugee and visa cases, however, we see potentially dangerous scenarios in which we cannot afford any excuses.

[….]

These questions are crucial as Congress continues to debate immigration reform, in which vital national security concerns must be addressed. Our visa and refugee programs deserve far more monitoring and scrutiny, and there is something desperately wrong with a “vetting process” that makes so many repeated mistakes.

Instead of fixing the problems, the so-called ‘comprehensive immigration reform bill’ (S.744) weakens security measures already in place but doing poorly! Most efforts to strengthen security failed in the Senate Judiciary Committee mark-up largely due to heavy lobbying by refugee resettlement contractors who object to anything that slows the flow of refugees into the US (and slows the flow of taxpayer dollars into their coffers!).

Paul concludes by laying down a marker for Harry Reid. The question then becomes is this a recommendation by Paul or a demand; and will he follow through by holding up the Gang of Eight plus Grover bill *when it reaches the Senate floor?

“I respectfully request that the Senate consider the following two conditions as part of the comprehensive immigration-reform debate: One, the Senate needs a thorough examination of the facts in Massachusetts to see if legislation is necessary to prevent a similar situation in the future. Two, national security protections must be rolled into comprehensive immigration reform to make sure the federal government does everything it can to prevent immigrants with malicious intent from using our immigration system to gain entry into the United States in order to commit future acts of terror.”

The Politico Iowa poll story is here.

*Senator Paul, if you are reading this, please stay away from Grover Norquist!

I’m AnnC@refugeewatcher on twitter. Please tweet this and also follow me!