WASHINGTON — Before being granted refugee status in the U.S. and settling down in Bowling Green, Ky., Waad Ramadan Alwan was allegedly a sniper and skilled bombmaker targeting U.S. forces and bragging that his “lunch and dinner would be an American.”
Alwan is one of two Iraqi refugees who the Justice Department announced Tuesday had been charged with participating in an alleged plot to send cash, explosives and Stinger missiles to Iraq for use against Americans.
The men are among 56,000 Iraqis who took advantage of special programs to come to the United States for people who demonstrated they were in danger from militias in Iraq for their religious beliefs or because they were translators for U.S. government or media organizations.
Alwan was admitted into the U.S. even though his fingerprint was found in 2005 on an unexploded roadside bomb that was set to blow up a U.S. convoy in Iraq. The print was loaded into a Department of Defense database, but a search of that database was not then a part of the application process for refugee status in the U.S.
When asked how men who actively fought against the U.S. in Iraq could have been allowed into the country, a Department of Homeland Security official said the case demonstrates that there were “specific gaps” in refugee vetting procedures before 2010.
Since then, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, those information-sharing weaknesses have been identified and corrected.
Alwan, 30, and his cousin, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 23, were arrested in Kentucky on May 25.
