Afghan national and licensed physician Hayatullah Dawari first entered the United States in November 2008 and obtained a lawful permanent resident green card. He settled in Philadelphia, Pa. Dawari did not appear to have been licensed to practice medicine in the United States. Rather, he worked at 7-11 convenience stores, taught children at a local mosque, and was regarded as a deeply pious, prominent member of his community, according to letters of support from co-workers and neighbors later arguing that he be freed on bond.
But the initial 2008 security vetting for Dawari’s LPR apparently failed to discover that he omitted any reference to the fact that Russian military authorities had arrested him in the late 1980s for working with mujahideen fighters battling the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, a likely disqualifying factor for obtaining legal residence that almost certainly would have led to further investigation, which would have found that up until he immigrated to the United States and for years afterward he maintained deep, abiding, and clandestine ties to a violent Islamist extremist group in Afghanistan and Pakistan that often targeted American troops.
Only years later did an FBI and ICE Homeland Security Investigations counterterrorism investigation discover he already had “strong ties” to operatives of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) before arriving on an immigrant visa, to the extent that he had treated their combat wounded. The HIG is a violent al-Qaeda-associated group that frequently attacked U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan in pursuit of overthrowing the government and replacing it with an Islamic state. The group is also active in Pakistan. The U.S. Treasury Department designated its founder, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a “global terrorist”.
A defense attorney for Dawari much later inadvertently disclosed that the doctor had treated HIG operatives prior to moving to the United States in late 2008, a fact that screeners could reasonably have uncovered by smart questioning, intelligence database checks, and interviews with those around him checking his proffered whereabouts during that period in question or the 1980s fighting with mujahideen.
Dawari’s ties to HIG in both countries were so deep and broad, the attorney said, that shortly after entering the United States in 2008 - on his LPR - Dawari even returned to the region and stayed among HIG associates for seven months before coming back to the United States. Much later, after Dawari’s August 2014 arrest for deceits related to all of this obscured personal history, U.S. prosecutors argued that his ties to his HIG network ran so deep that it would have hidden Dawari should he flee U.S. prosecution if allowed out on bond.
Security screeners for the LPR almost certainly would not have granted Dawari permission to enter had they discovered these ties and the 1980s mujahideen militia fighting in the post-9/11 context (the United States had armed and equipped the anti-Russian mujahideen, which had turned those arms on the United States well before Dawari obtained his visa). After the requisite five years more of keeping all this under wraps, in November 2013 Dawari applied for U.S. citizenship.
But security screening for the citizenship application was not what brought Dawari to FBI attention and got him convicted and ultimately deported for terrorism activity. Federal authorities said Dawari confirmed his “membership” in the HIG group during a coincidentally intercepted telephone call within weeks of submitting his 2013 citizenship application. The subsequent investigation over a period of more months uncovered the rest.
Dawari continued his relationships knowing he would draw law enforcement attention if discovered. So he communicated with HIG operatives by sending and receiving packages of books containing coded, hidden messages, sometimes about urgent unspecified actions. Federal investigators were clearly spooked by some shipments just prior to Dawari’s arrest.
Just prior to his arrest, FBI agents found in one of the shipped books two pages glued together with a note secreted inside. The note contained a coded message with directions for “urgent action” of a nature left unspecified in court records. Both shipments of books contained instructions to forward select books to other individuals including a known HIG associate in Philadelphia. A search of that person’s home found a handwritten sheet that appeared to be a cypher, containing a list of numbers and cryptic words.
In the end, security vetting for his 2013 citizenship application proved unnecessary, as by then the FBI had become aware of his HIG links and had opened a multi-faceted counterterrorism investigation. Prosecutors did charge him with lying on his citizenship application about his associations with HIG. In 2014, Dawari pleaded guilty to immigration fraud, was sentenced to two years time served and deported to Afghanistan as part of a plea deal.