----- 4 stars ----- The Fight to Save an Innocent Refugee from Almost Certain Death / New Yorker Omar Ameen came to the U.S. to escape the violence in Iraq. Now he’s accused of being a member of an ISIS hit squad. [...] Ameen listened intently, elbows on the table, head hunched forward. As he began to understand the charge, he was overcome with relief. “I wasn’t even in Iraq at the time of the murder,” he said. “This will be easy.” [...] "Soon after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President, he began saying that terrorist groups had infiltrated the flow of refugees into the U.S. “We have no idea where they’re coming from,” he said, in an interview with ABC. “This could be one of the great Trojan horses ever, since the original.” Shortly before the election, he said, in a debate with Hillary Clinton, that Muslim refugees in the U.S. were “definitely, in many cases, ISIS-aligned.” His son Donald, Jr., a senior campaign adviser, posted on Twitter, “If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful? That’s our Syrian refugee problem.” Security and intelligence officials found the rhetoric absurd: refugees are the most thoroughly vetted category of people entering the U.S. [...] “They were so intent upon linking refugees and terrorism that they were willing to put false examples out to the public,” the former N.S.C. member told me. [...] On March 6, 2017, Sessions announced that “more than three hundred people who came here as refugees are under F.B.I. investigation for potential terrorism-related activities.” Career officials were aghast. “What they left out is that these investigations are based on the vaguest scraps of information”—such as tips about neighbors wearing burqas—“and almost none of them go anywhere,” the military-intelligence official said. [...] Ihsan’s parents were shocked to learn that Ameen had been charged with their son’s death. Neither of them had seen the killers—and, to their knowledge, neither had anyone else. “They were asking, ‘Do you know who said Omar did it?’ ” Humble recalled. “We were, like, ‘Uh, no, that’s something we came to find out from you.’ ” [...] Ameen had been so confused, during his arrest, that he didn’t say goodbye to his wife and kids. “I thought, There must be some mistake, and I’ll be able to come back and explain it to them later,” he told me. “So I just walked out, and I didn’t even say goodbye.”
Links
Links
Links
----- 4 stars ----- The Fight to Save an Innocent Refugee from Almost Certain Death / New Yorker Omar Ameen came to the U.S. to escape the violence in Iraq. Now he’s accused of being a member of an ISIS hit squad. [...] Ameen listened intently, elbows on the table, head hunched forward. As he began to understand the charge, he was overcome with relief. “I wasn’t even in Iraq at the time of the murder,” he said. “This will be easy.” [...] "Soon after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President, he began saying that terrorist groups had infiltrated the flow of refugees into the U.S. “We have no idea where they’re coming from,” he said, in an interview with ABC. “This could be one of the great Trojan horses ever, since the original.” Shortly before the election, he said, in a debate with Hillary Clinton, that Muslim refugees in the U.S. were “definitely, in many cases, ISIS-aligned.” His son Donald, Jr., a senior campaign adviser, posted on Twitter, “If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful? That’s our Syrian refugee problem.” Security and intelligence officials found the rhetoric absurd: refugees are the most thoroughly vetted category of people entering the U.S. [...] “They were so intent upon linking refugees and terrorism that they were willing to put false examples out to the public,” the former N.S.C. member told me. [...] On March 6, 2017, Sessions announced that “more than three hundred people who came here as refugees are under F.B.I. investigation for potential terrorism-related activities.” Career officials were aghast. “What they left out is that these investigations are based on the vaguest scraps of information”—such as tips about neighbors wearing burqas—“and almost none of them go anywhere,” the military-intelligence official said. [...] Ihsan’s parents were shocked to learn that Ameen had been charged with their son’s death. Neither of them had seen the killers—and, to their knowledge, neither had anyone else. “They were asking, ‘Do you know who said Omar did it?’ ” Humble recalled. “We were, like, ‘Uh, no, that’s something we came to find out from you.’ ” [...] Ameen had been so confused, during his arrest, that he didn’t say goodbye to his wife and kids. “I thought, There must be some mistake, and I’ll be able to come back and explain it to them later,” he told me. “So I just walked out, and I didn’t even say goodbye.”