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Chairman McCaul Releases November Terror Threat Snapshot

November 7, 2018

Washington, D.C. – House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) today released November's Terror Threat Snapshot, a monthly assessment of the Committee's continuing effort to highlight the growing threat America, the West, and the world face from ISIS and other Islamist terrorists.

Key Points:

  • Five senior members of the Taliban, Mohammad Fazl, Mohammed Nabi, Khairullah Khairkhwa, Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Noorullah Noori have all been appointed as members of the terrorist organization's political office in Qatar. The men, collectively known as the Taliban Five, are former inmates of the American prison at Guantanamo Bay. The men were released as part of an exchange deal to ensure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in 2014.
  • October 23, 2018: Dias Muratovich Kadyrbayev, 24, a citizen of Kazakhstan, who in June 2015 was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and disposing of incriminatory items from Dzhokar Tsarnaev's room, was deported to his native Kazakhstan. Kadyrbayev was sentenced to six years in prison in 2015, but was transferred to ICE custody in August 2018. His actions are considered aggravated felonies under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
  • The Pakistani government has released Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, cofounder of the Afghan Taliban. Arrested in 2010, Baradar was the second most senior member of the Taliban. The release appears to have been a goodwill gesture to bring the Taliban, the Afghan government, and the U.S., as talks have been underway in Qatar.

October 31, 2018: Ahmad Suhad Ahmad, 30, an Iraqi refugee now U.S. citizen living in Tuscon, Arizona, has been charged with distributing instructions on how to make explosives. Ahmad told an undercover informant that he had learned how to make improvised explosives during the war in Iraq. He traveled to Las Vegas to demonstrate to the undercover informant how to construct the device before he was arrested.

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The complete November Terror Threat Snapshot is available, here.

View the Committee's interactive Terror Threat Snapshot, here.


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