ISIS-K, the Afghan branch of the Islamic State, directed an Afghan man’s foiled U.S. Election Day terror plot, according to two senior U.S. officials briefed on the matter.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was arrested by the FBI last week in Oklahoma and is accused of planning to purchase two AK-47 rifles, 10 magazines and ammunition, and carry out a mass shooting attack on Election Day targeting large groups of people, according to court documents and Tawhedi’s alleged statements to the FBI after his arrest.
ISIS-K was responsible for a deadly attack at Crocus City Hall near Moscow, a concert venue, in March that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured, and other attacks. The revelation that a foreign terrorist organization was in communication with a would-be attacker inside the U.S. makes the alleged Election Day plot different from most terrorism cases in the past decade, most of which involved people self-radicalized online or self-directed attempts.
The charging documents say Tawhedi told the FBI that he was communicating with a person named “Malik” and that he knew “Malik” was affiliated with ISIS. Tawhedi has not yet been arraigned, and no plea has been entered.
When asked about ISIS-K’s direct involvement in the case, a FBI spokesperson declined to comment.
Tawhedi had worked as a security guard for the CIA in Afghanistan. He arrived in the U.S. in September 2021 on a special immigrant visa a month after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, court documents said.
Tawhedi had passed two rounds of vetting — as every Afghan resettled in the U.S. undergoes a rigorous screening and vetting process regardless of which agency they previously worked with — and no derogatory information was detected, a senior administration official familiar with the details previously told NBC News.
Tawhedi’s mother, who lives in Afghanistan, is believed to be an ISIS sympathizer, two U.S. officials said.Â
NBC News was first to report that a family member of Tawhedi was arrested and charged by French law enforcement this weekend with planning to conduct an attack on a soccer stadium or a shopping center in that country, according to the Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office in Paris.
In that case, the Afghan charged was 22 years old.
In the France case, law enforcement officials told NBC News they had opened a preliminary investigation into a potential terror plot in France on Sept. 27. Then on Oct. 8, one day after Tawhedi’s arrest in Oklahoma, the 22-year-old and two other unnamed people were arrested in Toulouse and Fronton, in the Haute-Garonne region of southwestern France where they lived.
The two other people were questioned and released.
A French law enforcement official said the investigations revealed “the existence of a planned violent action targeting people in a football stadium or a shopping center instigated by one of them, age 22, of Afghan nationality.” Investigators also found evidence that “establish[es] radicalization and adherence to the ideology of the Islamic State.”
The emergence of ISIS-K as a deadly terrorist organization plotting and directing attacks worldwide has been a growing problem, multiple U.S. officials have told NBC News.
In addition to the Crocus City Hall attack, the group launched an attack in Iran this year that killed dozens, while other high-profile attacks have been disrupted in Europe.
Advocates for Afghans who worked for the U.S. government say Tawhedi is not representative of the large community of Afghans who fought alongside Americans at great personal risk, and they fear his case could tarnish the reputation of Afghans who have resettled here after the U.S. withdrawal.
“One bad apple is not reflective of the thousands of Afghan veterans who gave their lives and limbs for our country in the fight against terrorism and who remain dedicated to keeping America safe,” said Geeta Bakshi, a former CIA counterterrorism officer and founder of FAMIL, a nonprofit organization that supports Afghan veterans in the U.S.
Marlene Lenthang and Dan De Luce contributed.