Jamshid Muhtorov

Back to Database
Vetting Year
Time from U.S. Entry to Discovery
4 years
National Security Crime Type
Terrorism-related
Nationality of Perpetrator
Uzbekistani
Immigration Status Type
Asylum; Lawful Permanent Residence
Agency Responsible for Failure
USCIS for Refugee classification
Opportunities Missed
1
Nation(s) Vetting Occurred
Uzbekistan
U.S.
Arresting Agency
FBI
Criminal Charges
Material support to a terrorist organization, false statement on a passport application
Case Outcome
Convicted 06/2018 for material support for terrorism
Case Summary

In February 2007, Uzbekistan national Jamshid Muhtorov, his wife, and two children somehow ended up applying for asylum after moving to Aurora, Colo. Judging from available court records, Muhtorov applied for lawful permanent residence in about 2009 or 2010 because he had it in hand when he received a truck-driving license in 2010. Within two years, the FBI arrested Muhtorov as he prepared himself for martyrdom by flying from the United States to fight with the U.S.-designated Central Asia terrorist organization Islamic Jihadist Union (IJU) against American troops in Afghanistan.

A much later FBI terrorism investigation – not any visa-related security vetting – determined that Muhtorov was already a radicalized IJU supporter before he emigrated to the United States with his family. He also held an abiding interest in terrorist group ideology, especially of the groups Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tabligh, and Akromiya, “ultimately embracing his curiosity about terrorist sects”, according to court records filed later in his terrorism prosecution.

Muhtaorov likely carried those extremist interests with him into America in 2007 and built on them in a way that USCIS security screeners might reasonably have found in a semi-thorough investigation. In December 2009, for instance, a fellow Uzek in Philadelphia invited him to stay for a period of time, found common cause supporting Uzbekistan terrorist organizations, shared extremist propaganda videos, and began to clandestinely plot to support and join the groups overseas, court records show.

Instead of being rejected for either asylum during this radicalization period with interviews or online social media investigations, or later permanent residence, Muhtorov was free to stoke his interest in martyrdom operations until February 2011, when the FBI learned that he and the friend had developed online communications with a key operative of the IRU, which is an al-Qaeda-affiliated group of mainly Uzbeks and other Central Asians. IJU was operating then under the auspices of the Taliban in Afghanistan and also in Syria. By May 2011, Muhtorov was illegally planning to travel to join IJU there and become a martyr, a terrorism crime. He told his eight-year-old daughter that he would never see her again but that, if she were a good girl, she would see him in heaven.

“Remember, I told you to pray for your Daddy to become a martyr. ... Don‘t pray, ‘Don‘t let him leave!‘ It will be a curse for me. ... Pray and say, ’make my father a martyr, one of [the] real martyrs.’”

On January 21, 2012, the FBI arrested Muhtorov at Chicago O'Hare Airport with a one-way ticket to Turkey on his way to join IJU. In June 2012, a jury found Muhtorov guilty of providing material support to IJU, in the form of himself as a fighter and several hundred dollars.