Bosnia-born Abdullah Ramo Pazara became a naturalized U.S. citizen on May 17, 2013 and, 11 days after swearing his oath of allegiance in St. Louis, Mo., departed America to join the jihad in Syria and was soon serving a mortal U.S. enemy, the Islamic State. Pazara became commander of an Islamic State tank battalion and later died in fighting.
Adjudicators at Missouri’s USCIS field office clearly had not noticed that Pazara, who worked as a long-haul truck driver, was already established as a radicalized jihadist before granting him citizenship, although a different, more robust kind of security vetting might easily have turned up evidence of this among friends, family, and perhaps a foreign government or even Pazara himself.
But aside from the dedication to violent anti-American jihad, a distant prior job in his country of origin likely would have derailed Pazara’s 2013 bid for U.S. citizenship had an earlier generation of government reviewers dug deep enough to learn of it: Back in Bosnia during the early 1990s, before Pazara converted to Islam, he served as a sniper with a rapacious Serbian militia during the former Yugoslavia’s brutal civil war, killing and ethnically cleansing Bosnian Muslims, according to media reports.
Those reviewing his refugee application during the pre-9/11 era might be forgiven for not discerning a deeply disqualifying personal history as an ethnic-cleansing Serb sniper in that war. But those conducting his background check in the supposedly more vigilant and technologically advanced post-9/11 era clearly also did not find it before granting citizenship, nor the jihadist commitment that had him departing 11 days after receiving it to join ISIS.
Evidence that came out later pegs Pazara’s radicalization to about 2011 when he began associating with Bosnia-born Nihad Rosic, also a truck driver whose family had been close friends to the Pazarro family back in Bosnia. Pazara met Nihad Rosic during a truck driving trip to Utica, N.Y., where Rosic lived. Afterward, the men developed a close bond and frequently contacted each other on social media. According to Rosic’s attorney, Rosic “turned a corner” in terms of his religiosity around 2011, the same time that Pazara also adopted radical religious beliefs.
One clue for citizenship application reviewers that something unusual was afoot was that Pazara had legally changed his name to “Abdullah” Ramo Pazara. The brochure for the naturalization ceremony he attended reflects the official name change.
The FBI learned of Pazara’s whereabouts as part of an investigation into six Bosnian immigrants in the United States, including Pazara’s friend Rosic, for allegedly sending money, rifle scopes, knives, military equipment, and other supplies to Pazara through intermediaries in Bosnia and Turkey. All were indicted in February 2015 on various terrorism charges (most had immigrated as refugees while still children many years earlier).
In March 2014, according to the indictment, the FBI found that Pazara recounted to an unnamed individual in the United States a mission in which his tank battalion took control of a large area, killed 11 opposing soldiers, and captured one prisoner. Pazara stated that he intended to slaughter the prisoner the next day. Video surfaced of Pazara’s battalion killing five soldiers, one by beheading.
In May 2014, Pazara uploaded a photo album of dead combatants from the Kurdish militias, who were fighting for a state within Syria and who had been killed fighting Pazara’s battalion. “These kafirs [nonbelievers] of the PKK [the Kurdistan Workers’ Party] … with Allah’s help, were killed during the last military action fighting against the Islamic State,” Pazara proclaimed online. “This is what is waiting for them in the world, these infidels in the trenches were killed one by one fleeing their homes.” One of the dead fighters was wearing a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt, and Pazara quipped that, despite their designer apparel, “they didn’t have any footwear, Allahu Akbar.”
Pazara was killed in action in September 2014.