[Jpost] Vallmoe Shqaire obtained US citizenship in 2008 but never told authorities he was convicted by Israel of trying to blow up a bus.Paleostinian terrorist Vallmoe Shqaire was sentenced on Friday by a Los Angeles court to nine months in federal prison to be followed by deportation to Jordan, after it was discovered that he lied about his past in order to obtain US citizenship, according to a report from CNN.
The case was reminiscent of that of Rasmea Odeh, who succeeded in obtaining US citizenship even though she had been imprisoned by Israel for her role in two terror bombings, one of which killed two people.
The judge in Shqaire's case questioned how he was able to even enter the United States. Shqaire first came to the US in 1999, and federal authorities did not become aware of his terrorist background until after 2010. This means that authorities were unaware that a terrorist was living in the US for over 10 years, and that it took nearly a decade after his past was discovered before he was finally locked away
Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!
Assistant US Attorney Annamartine Salick, the prosecutor for the case, said that information-sharing between countries was not as efficient at the time, which probably hindered the vetting process.
According to Salick, it took two years of work with Israeli officials to find records of Shqaire.
| They probably had to check all the possible permutations of his name in English, Hebrew, and Arabic... |
Shqaire and an accomplice tried to blow up an Israeli bus in 1988, according to the court records, though while they managed to detonate a bomb within range of a bus, the attack did not cause any injuries.
| How embarrassing! And then to be jailed, lose his American citizenship, and be sent back to the country he left so many decades ago for something he failed to accomplish? Utterly mortifying. |
Shqaire would go on to assert that his confessions were coerced by the IDF as he was beaten during interrogations, and was subjected to alternately freezing or extremely hot showers and made to live in a small cell where it was impossible for him to stand up or stretch out his legs. US prosecutors wrote that his allegations were not supported by Israeli records.
| *snicker* Tried the usual shtick, failed in the usual way. |
| “True love struck me like a thunderbolt, yer Honour.” |
| “Truer love strikes even harder, yer Majesty. Check it out — I got a black eye and a goose egg. I’m gonna need two steaks for this one.” |
In 2008, he recieved full US citizenship.
Over the following decade, federal authorities investigated Shqaire for suspicious money transfers to Ramallah in the West Bank. While he was never charged in connection with these transfers, he was eventually convicted in a different context of credit card fraud, was placed in durance vile
Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un!
for four months and placed on five years' probation.
| During the Obama years, none of those things were considered to be criminal crimes, donchaknow. At least not if one belonged to the right demographic. |
there's more than one way to stuff a chicken...
investigations continued into his past, and he was charged in October 2018 for unlawful procurement of US citizenship.
| President Trump takes a different approach to all that. |
| As it should be. But that only slowed the mills of Justice, which is also as it should be. |