Terror case baffles family
Suspect’s wife, parents adrift after his arrest
The phone rang in the tiny two-bedroom apartment that Omar Faraj Saeed Al-Hardan shared with his parents, wife and 10-month-old son.
The voice on the line said he and his parents were up for a review of their citizenship application. The family was elated, believing they were on the last leg of becoming U.S. citizens.
On Thursday, he helped his parents, who are both over 60 years old and medically disabled, down the stairs and drove to the immigration office in north Houston, according to his family’s account.
After more than six years in Texas, they thought they finally might get their shot at the American dream.
“Omar sent me a message saying ‘Thank God I’ve been given a citizenship interview.’ He’s been waiting for years for that interview,” said Saeed Al-Hardan, Omar’s older brother.
But Omar and his parents weren’t granted naturalization interviews. Instead, they were immediately separated.
After being interrogated for hours, parents Faraj Al-Hardan and his wife, Layla, were given the news. Their son, Omar, had been arrested and taken into custody on a three-count indictment handed down the day.
His alleged crimes:
procuring naturalization unlawfully, making false statements and providing material support to the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – also known as ISIL, ISIS, IS or the Arabic equivalent Daesh. Combined, these charges have a maximum sentence of 53 years, if not served concurrently.
The 24-year-old alleged terrorist sympathizer could face the rest of his life in prison. His arrest quickly drew national attention — billed as part of a multi-city terrorism plot that drew the attention of Gov. Greg Abbott.
Federal officials declined to provide any additional details on the charges.
“I am not permitted to provide any details about evidence and such at this stage of a prosecution. I can tell you that there will be a great deal of that presented to the court at the time of the detention hearing on Wednesday,” said Angela Dodge, public affairs officer at the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Texas.
Back at the apartment in the Westchase District, AlHardan’s 18-year-old wife, Haneen Al-Kokiss, was alone caring for their baby. At 10:34 a.m., she said several armed agents burst into the tiny apartment, startling both Al-Kokiss and her son.
She struggled to understand what was happening as they quickly took her into custody. She didn’t have time to change out of her indoor garments or put on her headscarf, which is considered obligatory for observant Muslim women.
They took her in for questioning, barefoot and all, as her baby screamed, Al-Kokiss recalled. The agents seized 56 listed items in their raid, including more than a dozen electronic devices, the apartment lease, receipts, notebooks, firecrackers, soldering equipment and, item No. 39, “books, paper and copy of ISIS flag,” according to the receipt for property seized that was left at the cleared out AlHardan home.
Upon news of Al-Hardan’s arrest, the family now faces eviction from their apartment.
The family, who spoke to the Houston Chronicle at length Saturday, doesn’t fully understand the charges or how to maneuver in the American judicial system. All they know and cling to is the notion of Al-Hardan’s innocence.
“They’ve wrongly imprisoned him. My husband hasn’t done anything,” Al-Kokiss said as she cried for her husband’s release. “I want him to be with me and my child. We hate (ISIS). Every day, they kill people. It’s impossible he would do something like this. I’m lost without him.”
From camp to camp
Although the family hasn’t experienced much upward mobility since they arrived in Texas on Nov. 2, 2009, they’ve come a long way from the physical and economic insecurity they experienced in the Middle East. Omar and his family live on food stamps and the limited income he makes as an in-house caregiver and, at times, a limousine driver. The five of them survive on about $1,000 a month. But, at least in America, they were glad to have a home with solid walls, a car, and most importantly, a peaceful life away from the war and the sounds of their crumbling country.
The head of the Al-Hardan family and Omar’s father, Faraj, was the child of Palestinian parents who settled down as refugees in Iraq after being displaced in the 1940s. Although he and his children were all born in Iraq, he said they could not legally obtain citizenship. So they remained stateless denizens, unable to own property or travel outside of the country.
After the war on terror that put boots on the ground in Iraq, the AlHardan family fled their home in Baghdad to a Jordan refugee camp in 2003, where they lived for five years. Omar spent most of his adolescent years in those refugee tents. The family moved to a second camp in 2008 on Iraq’s border with Syria, before the rise of ISIS, which was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the secretary of state in 2014.
“We fled Baghdad because of the constant killing and slaughtering. This started happening a lot where we were living,” Saeed Al-Hardan said. “We are Palestinians living in Iraq. The situation got extremely dangerous. We were all being asked to join Iraqi militias, both Sunni and Shi’i.
“If we refused to join, they would kill us. So we fled. We didn’t want to bear arms and kill. We fled and lived in refugee camps for years. We slept in tents waiting to escape to another country.”
Years of living in desperate conditions, helpless and with no place to go, took a toll on Al-Hardan’s parents. His father developed acute heart issues that require constant medical attention. His mother has diabetes and a slew of other medical issues.
But their lives changed when they were selected as one of a few dozen refugee families at the camp to come to the land of opportunity.
‘Nobody wants to help’
The apartment where they have lived for the last five months is small and simple. Arabic calligraphy hangs over two small couches in the living room. The muted widescreen television flickers with images of tanks and war on Al-Jazeera as Faraj Al-Hardan takes his place on the couch. Muffled cries from his wife and young daughter-in-law could be heard coming from another room.
None of the Al-Hardans speak English, at least not well enough to talk with lawyers and law enforcement or even read the 24-hour eviction notice they were handed on Jan. 8. Although Omar likely will receive an Arabic interpreter for his criminal trial, the rest of his family is in the dark.
“We don’t understand the law. We’re not able to go anywhere without English in this country. Nobody wants to help because they’re afraid. Nobody has even talked to me or asked about me because they’re scared,” Saeed Al-Hardan said. “I want people to know that we’re innocent. We’re being wronged. There’s been no evidence.”
Omar Al-Hardan first appeared in court on Jan. 8, a day after his arrest. Attorney David Adler was appointed as his public defender, and Omar AlHardan’s requested an interpreter to communicate. Since his arrest, relatives have been unable to contact him, and Al-Kokiss said she hasn’t been allowed to visit her husband in detention.
None of Omar Al-Hardan’s family members showed up in court because they didn’t know how to get there.
Older brothers Rayid and Saeed are looking after their parents, nephew and Al-Kokiss in Omar’s absence. Rayid Al-Hardan lives with his wife and children in Dallas and has come down temporarily, and Saeed Al-Hardan lives with his wife in Houston about 30 minutes away. But both are afraid of the potential backlash now that their brother has been indicted.
Even if he’s proven innocent, they don’t know if they’ll be able to go back to their old lives.
“Today my family was evicted. Tomorrow, who knows if I may be evicted, too. I’m sure that I’ve been fired from my job, and when my brother is released, I’m sure he will be too. We all have the same last name, so we’ve all become pariahs. I feel that when I’m out in public, everyone is staring at me. A lot of people have taken my picture, and I’ve been on TV,” Saeed Al-Hardan said.
Omar Al-Hardan is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday for a detention hearing to determine whether he should be allowed to walk free on bail or should be detained during the trial, according to an official from the Department of Justice.
A motion for a detention hearing can be requested if a defendant is considered a serious flight risk or in a crime of violence. More details about the case and reasons for the hearing weren’t provided.
The FBI declined to comment and deferred all inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was unavailable for comment.
Vetting process
Nearly 785,000 refugees from all over the world have resettled in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001. In the last three years alone, about 70,000 refugees annually made it through the vetting process and arrived in the U.S., with Iraqis consistently placing in the top two for refugee countries of origin, according to the Washington-based think tank Migration Policy Institute.
But debate in Washington and among governors reached a head after the Paris attacks, in which at least 130 people were killed. Although it was later discovered that the Syrian passport of an alleged attacker was forged, the document sparked a huge debate about refugee vetting processes. Republican presidential hopefuls Sen. Ted Cruz, RTexas, and Jeb Bush called for granting refugee status only to Christian Syrians. And more than half of governors in the U.S. directed public statements to the White House refusing to accept any Syrian refugees.
Abbott has been vocal on the refugee vetting issue and was one of the first governors to publicly refuse Syrian refugees, saying any incoming Syrians “could be connected to terrorism.” Although states can’t refuse refugees because that power rests with the federal government, Texas filed a request for a restraining order to stop the flow of Syrian refugees, which it quietly withdrew a few weeks later in early December.
Abbott was quick to take to social media to make his point, tweeting on Jan. 7, “Who’d thought? A refugee lied to immigration authorities about contact with ISIS & providing it support,” which was retweeted nearly 700 times.
He later put out a statement that said: “This is precisely why I called for a halt to refugees entering the US from countries substantially controlled by terrorists ... I once again urge the president to halt the resettlement of these refugees in the United States until there is an effective vetting process that will ensure refugees do not compromise the safety of Americans and Texans.”
Alleged online contact
Little is known about how the FBI was made aware of Omar Al-Hardan and what evidence prompted the arrest. When the Al-Hardan family was interrogated, they were told Omar Al-Hardan had made purchase on Ebay of electrical wires and soldering equipment and had watched YouTube videos showing ISIS fighters.
Whether those videos are ISIS propaganda is unclear. Relatives are confused as to how the evidence they were shown would point to Omar AlHardan being an alleged ISIS supporter.
“If I’ve watched (ISIS), does that mean that I’m a part of them?” Faraj AlHardan asked, saying that he and his family watched videos from the Middle East to keep in touch with the news.
In a statement announcing the indictment, Department of Justice officials said Omar AlHardan allegedly received weapons training, had intentions of providing personnel support to ISIS and that he was affiliated with the group since 2014.
According to the indictment, Omar Al-Hardan allegedly lied to officials about weapons training during an interview in October 2015. In addition, he allegedly told immigration officers that he was not affiliated with a terrorist organization and was given permanent resident status in 2011. Authorities allege that he began providing material support to ISIS in May 2014, months before filing out documents for his naturalized citizen application.
Fred Burton, vice president at Stratfor, an Austinbased global intelligence firm, said that the general public may never know what goes on behind the scenes of cases related to national security.
“The FBI is the 1,000pound gorilla in the global war on terror,” said Burton, who was deputy chief of the State Department’s counterintelligence division. “They are never oneoff cases, they are always spin-off cases, like peeling an onion back.
“Was he in communication with someone, or did we raid a location in Afghanistan that ultimately led to this person being identified, or was the FBI up on a wire tap or monitoring e-mail traffic with another suspect? Those are always intriguing aspects of these cases.”
Omar Al-Hardan has allegedly been linked to 23-year-old Iraqi Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, another suspected terrorist living in Sacramento who is facing up to eight years in prison for traveling abroad to fight and lying about it to authorities.
According to the Associated Press, Al-Jayab bragged about fighting overseas in Syria and allegedly told Omar AlHardan in 2013 via social media that he would give him weapons training and help sneak him into Syria. But Saeed Al-Hardan is adamant that his brother wouldn’t fight alongside ISIS.
“Whether it is my brother or even my father, if he was a terrorist, I’d want nothing to do with him. We are victims. … If he wanted to go fight, he wouldn’t come to America. It would have been easier for him (to stay),” Saeed Al-Hardan said.
“Today my family was evicted. Tomorrow, who knows if I may be evicted, too. I’m sure that I’ve been fired from my job, and when my brother is released, I’m sure he will be, too. We all have the same last name, so we’ve all become pariahs. I feel that when I’m out in public, everyone is staring at me.”
Saeed Al-Hardan, older brother of terror suspect Omar Al-Hardan