Iraqis scam their way into U.S. as refugees with phony kidnapping story

By Andrea Noble - The Washington Times - Tuesday, March 28, 2017

The way Adil Hasan told it, he’d faced a harrowing ordeal before he was admitted to the United States as an Iraqi refugee.

The 38-year-old was kidnapped, held hostage for a month and tortured by a Shiite militia attempting to force Hasan’s brother to drop an investigation he was overseeing at the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity. Mr. Hasan was only released after his brother, Yousif Al Mashhadani, paid a $20,000 ransom.

Federal prosecutors said there was just one problem with Mr. Hasan’s story: None of it was true.

Prosecutors say Mr. Hasan and his brother fabricated the kidnapping story to justify their refugee resettlement applications submitted to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees while they were living in a refugee camp in Jordan. It was as a result of those falsified accounts that the brothers, as well as Mr. Hasan’s wife, were admitted to the United States as Iraqi refugees in 2008 and later applied for citizenship.

All three are now charged with immigration fraud.

Tuesday’s announcement of the charges by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia comes at a time that refugee admissions to the United States are under heightened scrutiny. President Trump has proposed a 120-day halt of all refugee admissions to the United States to give the State Department and Department of Homeland Security time to review the refugee application and adjudication process to ensure that refugees admitted to the United States do not pose threats to national security. The policy, including a temporary ban on travel of nationals from six majority-Muslim countries, has thus far been blocked by the courts.

With the extreme vetting policy on hold while the courts weigh in, the administration has started to take additional steps to toughen screening of visa applications, according to Reuters. New mandates include a social media check for all individuals who have lived in or traveled to territory controlled by the Islamic State.

It was unclear from court records what triggered the new scrutiny of the Iraqi defendants’ backgrounds, though interviews about the false kidnapping story were conducted in 2016, well before Mr. Trump was elected. Several discrepancies that eventually got investigators’ attention were described in a sworn affidavit written by FBI agent Sean MacDougall.

A third brother of the men said in 2015 during a naturalization interview that they were all related to Majid Al Mashhadani, a man who was linked to the 2004 kidnapping of a U.S. contractor in Iraq. Mr. Al Mashhadani, 35, Mr. Hasan and his wife, 32-year-old Enas Ibrahim, all failed to disclose their relationship to Majid Al Mashhadani in refugee application papers.The affidavit also states that in 2013, as Yousif Al Mashhadani was applying for U.S. citizenship, he was fingerprinted and his prints found to match evidence found at a bunker in Iraq where the U.S. contractor was held hostage.

Yousif Al Mashhadani, Mr. Hasan and Mrs. Ibrahim all appeared in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Tuesday to face charges of attempting to obtain naturalization contrary to law. The two men were held in custody pending a bond hearing scheduled for Friday. Mrs. Ibrahim was released on personal recognizance but will have to comply with numerous conditions. Family members gathered in court Tuesday wept as the two men were led into the courtroom in handcuffs.

Asked by a federal judge whether they understood the charges against them, the three defendants initially indicated they did not and tried to explain through an interpreter.
“I understand you do not believe you are guilty,” said U.S. District Judge Ivan Davis. “The question is do you understand the charge.”

All three defendants face up to 10 years in prison and the possibility of deportation if convicted. They will all be represented by the federal public defenders service. A representative of the service declined to comment after Tuesday’s hearing.

The FBI affidavit indicates that when questioned about the omissions and falsified information on their refugee applications, the defendants admitted they worried they would not have been allowed into the United States if they had told the truth.

Far from being held hostage for a month in 2005 as Mr. Hasan initially described, the affidavit states that he later admitted he “embellished his persecution story in 2008 after being told to do so by other refugees located in refugee camps in Jordan.”

The real story, Mr. Hasan is said to have relayed to the FBI agent in 2016, was that he was stopped at a Shia militia checkpoint, taken from his car and held in a house for five hours. During that time he was occasionally hit on the shoulder, but he was released without paying any ransom.

In addition to the falsified story about the kidnapping, which prosecutors say Mr. Al Mashhadani also told officials during the refugee screening process, the three are all also accused of attempting to hide the fact Mr. Hasan and Mr. Al Mashhadani are both brothers of Majid Al Mashhadani, who was said to have played a role in the kidnapping of an unidentified U.S. citizen. The details in the record match the kidnapping of contractor Roy Hallums, who was held captive for more than 300 days until U.S. military forces raided the compound where he was being held in 2005.

Years later, when the brothers applied for refugee status, they were required to list all family members and relatives. But prosecutors said they and Mrs. Ibrahim all purposely omitted Majid Al Mashhadani’s name from application documents. The affidavit indicates that Yousif Al Mashhadani told FBI agents investigating the case that he left out the name because “he was told by others applying for refugee status that he would not be allowed into the United States if any immediate family members had a criminal background.”

“What other choice did I have?” he was quoted as telling an FBI agent.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...g-prosecutors/