A relative of an Afghan national accused of planning a terrorist attack in Oklahoma on Election Day was charged in France on Saturday with plotting to attack a French soccer match and a shopping mall, the Paris counterterrorism prosecutor’s office said.
Both Afghans allegedly planned to carry out the operations on behalf of ISIS, the officials said. It is not known whether they planned to coordinate their attacks in the U.S. and France.
French officials said the Afghan charged there was 22 years old but declined to name him. They also did not name two other people who were also taken into custody by police in France for questioning and released.
The Afghan arrested in Oklahoma on Oct. 7, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was accused of plotting a violent attack with an assault rifle on behalf of ISIS on Nov. 5, the day Americans go to the polls. According to court documents, Tawhedi contributed to an ISIS charity in March and accessed ISIS propaganda online.
Two sources with knowledge of the matter later told NBC News that Tawhedi worked as a CIA security guard in Afghanistan. According to court documents, Tawhedi entered the U.S. in September 2021, about a month after the U.S. military completed its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Former President Donald Trump has accused the Biden administration of failing to properly vet the Afghan. A senior Biden administration official said Tawhedi was screened twice but no derogatory material was found.
“Every Afghan resettled in the U.S. goes through a rigorous screening and vetting process, regardless of which agency they’ve worked with,” the official said. “That process includes checking a full range of U.S. records and assets.”
A plot of land in France
French law enforcement officials told NBC News they opened a preliminary investigation into a possible terrorist plot in France on Sept. 27. On Oct. 8, the day after Tawhedi was arrested in Oklahoma, the unnamed 22-year-old Afghan and two other people were arrested in the cities of Toulouse and Fronton, in the Haute-Garonne region of southwestern France, where they live. “The investigation conducted revealed the existence of a planned violent action targeting people in a football stadium or a shopping mall, instigated by one of them, 22 years old, of Afghan nationality,” a French law enforcement official said. The official added that investigators found evidence that “establishes radicalization and adherence to the ideology of the Islamic State.” French officials said the 22-year-old Afghan was charged Saturday with plotting attacks against civilians and was remanded in custody. The two people held with him were released, but officials said the investigation was ongoing.
In March, police in Germany arrested two Afghans with suspected ties to ISIS in connection with a plot to attack the Swedish parliament, Politico reported. The planned attacks were said to be in retaliation for incidents of Quran burning in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.
German prosecutors said the two Afghans planned to attack police officers and others “near the Swedish parliament in Stockholm.” The two men also “searched the possible crime scene on the internet and made multiple unsuccessful attempts to obtain weapons.”
Questions about US screening
A central question for U.S. investigators was when Tawhedi became radicalized. According to a senior Biden administration official, counterterrorism officials estimate that happened during the three years he lived in the U.S.
A senior law enforcement official said the FBI is still investigating that question. The CIA declined to comment.
The senior Biden administration official said Tawhid has passed two rounds of screening. The official said Tawhid was first screened before entering the U.S. on what is known as a humanitarian release in September 2021, about 10 days after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan.
The official said he was screened again while living in Oklahoma City and applying for a special immigrant visa. He qualified for the visa because he had worked for the U.S. government.
Tawhedi was approved for the visa, the official said, but he had not yet taken the final steps to make it official. Special immigrant visas are given to Afghans who have worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan after they pass a Department of Homeland Security screening.
The screening process involves investigating possible ties to terrorism, ISIS or the Taliban using data from the applicant’s electronic devices, biometric data and other sources to search the extensive databases the U.S. has compiled over 20 years in Afghanistan.