An Afghan man who was evacuated from the war-torn country to Germany has been kept after he was flagged during a security screening, America’s top military commander in Europe said Thursday.
Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, the head of US European Command, told correspondents during a telephone instructions at the Pentagon that the man was “not of a high danger apparently.” Wolters additionally declined to say what drew the man out into the open, saying the information was “protected.”
“That individual is presently in the suitable custody of U.S. interagency officials, and Germany has been extremely, cooperative, and we are as yet working his experience investigation,” he said.
Wolters didn’t say when the man was kept, yet noticed that Ramstein started preparing Afghan evacuees on Aug. 20. The general added that 58 Afghans needed further screening, yet “I expect that each of the 58 will most likely clear.”
Wolters explained the initial screening of evacuees takes place soon after they arrive at the base and involves a “biometric and biographic screening so that through DOD [Defense Department] channels, through CBP [Customs and Border Protection] channels, and through FBI channels, we have comprehensively scrutinized their background.” As the Afghans prepare to depart, he added, “they’ll be screened one more time to make sure that from a biometric and biographical standpoint, cleared through DOD, CBP and FBI, that they continue to remain in the green.”
The general added that on the off chance that somebody “pops red, we tranquilly remove them from the typical handling line, and we put them in an alternate area so we can have some confinement and have a smidgen of additional chance to ensure that everyone is pretty much as free from any danger as could be expected.”
There are presently four American military offices in Europe where Afghan evacuees are being handled prior to going onto the US: Ramstein Air Base and Rhine Ordnance Barracks in Germany, Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily and Naval Station Rota in Cadiz, Spain.
Wolters said the four bases had taken in a sum of 38,000 evacuees and sent 16,000 on to the US since Aug. 20 — by far most from Ramstein Air Base.
Republicans have accused the Biden administration of evacuating thousands of Afghans with no connection to the US from Taliban-controlled territory at the expense of Afghans who assisted US-led NATO forces during their two-decade war with the Taliban — leaving the allies and their families to fend for themselves against the vengeful Islamic fundamentalists.
The Biden administration still can’t seem to give an authority check of purported Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders and candidates who figured out how to escape Afghanistan.
“They botched it going back and forth,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a veteran of the Afghanistan War, told news. “We left by far most of faithful Afghans who served close by of our American soldiers there in country, regardless of whether they had a visa endorsed. However we evidently likewise evacuated a huge number of Afghans who had no reasonable direct association with American soldiers, and we truly have no clue about what their identity is or capacity to vet them.
“So Joe Biden skeptically utilized the predicament of those reliable Afghans who served close by American soldiers to empty huge number of Afghans who reserved no option to be in the nation and is presently carrying them into the country to the tune of thousands consistently, with no capacity to vet whether they’re a security danger by any means.”