Chronology of Terror

Although international terrorist acts committed in the United States are not unique to the last few years, concern has increased over the past two decades with increasing terrorist activities in the Middle East, particularly suicide bombings, the deep involvement of the United States in Middle East peace negotiations, and U.S. military involvement in the region. That the United States has become a target for terrorists was tragically demonstrated by the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and again, when commercial planes hijacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001 destroyed its twin towers. These acts, and the related hijacked plane crash into the Pentagon on the same day as well as other earlier attacks and attempted attacks on targets in this country demonstrate that the United States must take the security of its people more seriously.

Chronology

1990—ElSayyid A. Nosair assassinated Jewish activist Meir Kahane in New York. Nosair was a follower of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who later was linked to the World Trade Center bombing and a U.N. bomb plot.

January 1993—Mir Amal Kansi, a Pakistani, murdered two CIA employees in a random shooting outside the Langley, VA headquarters and fled the country. He entered the United States in 1990 on a visa issued in Karachi, Pakistan. In 1992, he applied for political asylum in the United States and was routinely released with a work permit. Records indicate that he had been involved in anti-U.S. demonstrations in Pakistan. He had purchased an AK-47 assault rifle in Virginia.

February 1993—Under the influence of Sheik Abdel Rahman, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef organized Mohammed Salameh and three others in plotting and carrying out a bombing at New York’s World Trade Center that caused mass destruction, six deaths and more than a thousand wounded. The group was comprised of Egyptians and Palestinians. Yousef, traveling on an Iraqi passport, entered the United States in September 1992 without a visa, but was allowed to enter provisionally after asking for asylum, and was not detained because of lack of detention space. His companion, a Palestinian named Ahmad Ajaj, who arrived on a fake Swedish passport, was found to have bomb making videos and manuals in his luggage and was arrested on a passport fraud charge. Mohammed Salameh entered the United States in 1988 on a Jordanian passport and a visitors visa issued in Amman, Jordan. He applied for legal residence status [presumably asylee status], was turned down, but continued to be in the country for years on appeal of that decision. Sheik AbdelRahman, the Egyptian religious leader, was charged in Egypt with inciting a 1989 riot, but subsequently obtained a U.S. visa in Khartoum, Sudan, which had no automated lookout system that would have identified him as a security threat. He entered as a tourist, applied for political asylum, and received legal residence. In March, 1993, an immigration judge ordered him deported, but he was still in the country four months later when he was arrested for his role in the terrorist act.

June 1993—Eight militant Muslim fundamentalists were arrested in New York for plotting to blow up the United Nations headquarters, tunnels under the Hudson River and a federal office building. The arrestees were from Sudan, Egypt, the Israeli West Bank and Gaza, Jordan and Pakistan. To read the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on this incident, click here

March 1994—Rashad Baz, an immigrant from Lebanon, and two others shot up a van full of Hasidic students, wounding four, on the Brooklyn Bridge. Baz entered on a student visa in 1984. He attended courses part time at a community college in 1984-85. He married a U.S. citizen in 1989 and applied for legal residence in 1991. Baz was accompanied by Bassam Mousa Reyati, a Jordanian, who entered as a student in 1989 and received residency in 1992 on the basis of marriage to a U.S. citizen. Hlal Mohammed, a Jordanian, was the third terrorist.

September 1994—FBI Dir. Freeh sent Dep. Att. Gen. Gorelick a package of antiterrorism recommendations from the Executive Advisory Board of DoJ’s Office of Investigative Policies. The recommendations were:

1. develop a uniform database of State Dept. visa refusals;
2. rethink the visa waiver pilot program;
3. expand INS pre-inspection;
4. allow classified information to be used by the court in deportation proceedings;
5. tighten the asylum screening provisions and detain and expeditiously deport anyone suspected of terrorist intent;
6. tighten controls against NIV overstayers and persons involved in sham marriages;
7. share INS alien files with FBI terrorism investigators.

April 1996—The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) provides for expeditious removal of mala fide asylum applicants, restricts judicial review of deportation, increases penalties and RICO investigation powers for terrorism investigations. The State Dept. was required to develop a list of foreign terrorist organizations. President Clinton signed, but said at the time that he considered some of the changes “ill advised.” Subsequently the Administration tried unsuccessfully to strip summary exclusion from the law through the Leahy amendment to the Illegal Immigration Reform Act. In the end, the later act softened some of exclusion process for asylum claimants. Surviving in the INA are AEDPA amendments to Section 219 (“Designation of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”)

September 1996—The Illegal Immigration Reform and Alien Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRARA) changed summary exclusion to expedited exclusion for mala fide asylum applicants. The new standard allows an appeal to an Immigration Judge. Also included is a provision to make activities that “incite terrorism” or represent a danger to the community or security of the United States as a grounds for exclusion from the United States. The IIRARA also expanded detention facilities and broadened the definition of an aggravated felony for purposes of deportation.

February 1997—Ali Hassan Abu Kamal, a Palestinian teacher who arrived in the United States in December, 1996 on a tourist visa killed seven tourists with a 14 shot semiautomatic pistol at the Empire State Building before killing himself. He bought the gun in Florida despite federal law prohibiting sales to aliens who do not have at least 90 days of residency. Abu Kamal wrote that he was taking vengeance against enemies of the Palestinian people.

July 1997—Two Palestinians and a Pakistani were arrested on a tip-off to New York City police and were found to have suicide bombs and a note indicating they intended a terrorist attack in the city’s subways. Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a Palestinian, entered the United States (in Washington state) illegally from Canada three times and was apprehended and returned to Canada. He entered Canada as a student, but requested and received political asylum there. After his last U.S. entry the Canadians would not take him back because he had committed crimes in Canada. He applied for asylum here, and a judge ordered a hearing for 1998 and released him. Abu Mezer said that he had been accused by the Israeli government of belonging to Hamas, a terrorist organization, a claim which his family in Israel denied. On June 23, at a hearing on his asylum application, he withdrew it, and the judge gave him 60 days to depart the country. Lafi Khalil, the second terrorism suspect entered the country on a tourist visa and stayed on illegally.

August 1997—The State Department acknowledged that it still had not prepared the list of international terrorist organizations required by the Antiterrorism Act in 1996. A Dept. State spokesman said the report was overdue because any group designated as a terrorist organization had the right to challenge that designation in U.S. courts. The designation causes U.S. fundraising activities for the group to be cut off and members of the group to be barred from entering the United States.

August 1998—U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization, causing massive destruction and loss of life. Four terrorists were convicted in May 2001 of involvement in the conspiracy. They were:

• Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a Tanzanian, who assisted in creating the truck-bomb that blew up the embassy in Tanzania, was sentenced to life in prison.
• Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, a Jordanian, was convicted of participating in preparing the explosives used to bomb the embassy in Kenya, faces life in prison.
• Mohamed Rashed Daoud Alowhali, a Saudi Arabian, who participated in the attack on the embassy in Nairobi by distracting guards with a stun grenade, faces life in prison.
• Wahid El-Hage, born in Lebanon, a U.S. citizen, who acted as a messenger between Bin Laden and the terrorists in planning the attacks, faces life in prison.

December 1999—Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian, who was admitted to Canada as an asylum applicant in 1994, despite being expelled from Algeria and France for suspicion of terrorist activities, was arrested in Port Angeles, Wash. attempting to enter the U.S. from Canada with a carload of bomb-making materials destined for Los Angeles airport. He was to be met and assisted by Abdelhakim Tizegha, who entered the United States with another Algerian, Abdelghani Meskini as stowaways on a ship from Algeria. Meskini pleaded guilty and testified against the others. Tizegha applied for U.S. asylum and was released pending a hearing, and then went to Canada and illegally reentered the U.S. at Blaine, Wash. posing as a Mexican. Another Algerian, Bouabide Chamchi was allegedly also involved in a coordinated attack. He was apprehended entering the United States in Vermont using a forged French passport.

September 11, 2001—In the most destructive terrorist attack in history, four U.S. commercial airlines were skyjacked by armed Al Qaeda terrorists, and two of them were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The third plane was crashed into the Pentagon, and the fourth plane that presumably was headed for another Washington, D.C. target crashed in Pennsylvania, apparently as a result of a heroic effort by passengers to thwart the skyjackers. About 3,000 victims lost their lives in the attacks

Analysis and Commentary

The Antiterrorism Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform Act (IIRARA) adopted in 1996 some important measures designed to prevent international terrorist acts in the United States. Especially important was the expedited exclusion provision to assure that our asylum law is not available to would-be terrorists entering without documentation or false documentation, who in the past were able to use an asylum claim for automatic entry to the country with screening deferred indefinitely. Nevertheless, these measures are largely remedial rather than efforts to change the environment in which terrorism can thrive. A suicide bomber planning an attack in the New York subway is not going to be deterred by a more stringent penalty against terrorist acts.

The environment in which the threat of terrorism will continue to fester results from easy access into the United States for would-be terrorists, conditions in which it is easy to disappear into immigrant neighborhoods in city centers while being able to recruit local accomplices, and the availability of time and lack of physical constraints, even after detection, to prepare and execute an attack.

This terrorism environment is further complicated by overtaxing the Border Patrol with hundreds of thousands of illegal entries across our borders each year and the lack of any effective effort by INS inspectors to enforce the immigration law against additional tens of thousands of aliens who ignore the terms of their permission to visit our country as tourists, students, business travelers or some other status. It is compounded by the fact that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) established only the shell of a program to deny work to illegal aliens. The intended structure, that would create an inhospitable climate for illegal aliens, has been prevented from ever taking full effect by the lack of a mandatory system of verifiable worker identification.

Needed Remedial Action

• The employer sanction system for denying jobs to illegal aliens must be made effective with a nationwide system of worker ID verification linked to the Social Security database and alien registration numbers. This will decrease the flow of illegal aliens and increase the ability of the Border Patrol to keep out would-be illegal border crossers. It will also narrow the scope of work for INS worksite inspectors and allow them to increase efforts against unscrupulous employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.
  
  
• The adjustment of status provision for illegal aliens in the United States INA (Section 245(i)) must be eliminated - it currently is in suspense - so that aliens who bypass normal screening by illegally entering the country are not able to bypass rigorous screening before they can acquire U.S. permanent residence.
  
  
• A prohibition against the sale of handguns to nonresident aliens and recently arrived aliens should be strengthened to include explosive supplies.
  
  
• The computer assisted system to match entry and exit records of nonimmigrant aliens (US-VISIT) needs to be made operative for all visitors. In addition, all persons who enter the United in long-term nonimmigrant visa status (such as students and temporary workers) should be included in a separate monitoring system to track their status and whereabouts. When these record checks reveal aliens in violation of their status, action should be initiated to locate and deport them.
  
  
• The United States must insist that a country that has admitted an alien for residence re-admit that alien if he or she is excluded or deported from the United States after an illegal entry or nonimmigrant legal entry.