by WorldTribune Staff, February 24, 2022
Terrorists who walked out of the Bagram Air Base prison after Team Biden abandoned it to the Taliban could be among the Afghans who were evacuated to the United States, according to California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.
Some of the men who "pushed through the gates and got onto the plane" and "were clearly not in any way vetted ... could, and likely did, include some of the 5,000 who had just been released from Bagram prison," Issa told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday.
One of the terrorists who killed 13 U.S. military personnel and 169 Afghans in the bombings at Kabul airport walked away from the prison at Bagram Air Base after Joe Biden abandoned the base which held high strategic value, a report said.
Issa said there "were young, draft-age males, some of them teenagers," who were evacuated and unlikely to have been interpreters for the U.S., especially since "some of them didn't speak English at all."
Of the thousands of evacuees who were sent to Doha, Qatar, 20 percent had "paper passports" created for them, Issa added. With paper passports, an interviewer would ask evacuees in their native language for their name and who they were. An evacuee could then answer, "I am Joe Smith, and I live in this place, and I'm a good guy," give what they claimed was their date of birth, and that would all be recorded in their "paper passport," Issa said.
"It's trust, but no verify, and those people then went on, with a few exceptions, to the United States," Issa said.
"Now, I say a few exceptions because there were at least 300 that were sent to Kosovo," Issa continued, because "some of the Afghans pointed at these people and [said], 'This is so-and-so, he is a bad guy.' And so they were able to catch a few, and they sent them to Kosovo."
Issa said State Department officials told him the questionable evacuees — who number about 1,000, including those evacuated to other bases — are being vetted before sending them to the U.S. The congressman says he reminded the officials that "these people have already been identified as bad people, and that's the reason you sent them [to Kosovo]."
Despite these evacuees being flagged as risks, however, "they're now trying to get those people" to the United States, Issa said, adding: "The eventuality is at least one of them will succeed in something that will hurt or kill Americans."
