US officials say ISIS-K was behind foiled election day terror plot

to the Islamic StateThe Afghan branch of ISIS issued a directive Afghan man's plot to attack on US election day foiled, according to two senior US officials briefed on the matter.

Nasir Ahmed Tawhedi, 27, was arrested by the FBI last week in Oklahoma and is accused of planning to buy two AK-47 rifles, 10 magazines and ammunition, and planning a mass shooting on Election Day. Court documents and alleged statements by Tawhedi to the FBI after his arrest.

ISIS was responsible for this Deadly concert attack at Crocus City Hall near Moscow and other plots. The revelation that a foreign terrorist organization was in contact with the attacker inside the United States makes the Election Day plot different from most terrorist incidents over the past decade, many of which involved online or self-directed self-radicalization efforts.

Charging documents say Tawhedi told the FBI he was in contact with a man named “Malik” and that he knew “Malik” was affiliated with ISIS. Tawhedi has not yet been convicted and no appeal has been filed in his case.

Asked about ISIS-K's direct involvement in the case, an FBI spokesperson declined to comment.

Tawhedi worked as a security guard for the CIA in Afghanistan. He arrived in the US in September 2021 on a special immigrant visa, a month after the US withdrew from Afghanistan, court documents state.

Tawhedi went through two rounds of vetting — as every Afghan resettled in the U.S. goes through a rigorous screening and vetting process, regardless of the agency he previously worked with — and found no incriminating information, a senior administration official familiar with the matter previously said. the details. NBC News.

NBC News first reported that a member of Tawhedi's family has been arrested and charged. French authorities plan to attack a football stadium or shopping center in that country this weekend, according to the Paris anti-terrorism prosecutor's office.

The Afghan defendant in that case was 22 years old.

In the case of France, law enforcement authorities told NBC News they opened a preliminary investigation into a possible terrorist plot in France on September 27. Then, on October 8, the day after Tawhedi's arrest in Oklahoma, the 22-year-old and two other unidentified men were arrested in Toulouse and Fronton, in the Haut-Garonne region of southwestern France, where they lived.

The remaining two were released after interrogation.

A French law enforcement official said the investigation “discovered the existence of planned acts of violence against people in football stadiums or shopping centers, including one of them, a 22-year-old young man of Afghan nationality.” Investigators also found evidence that “establishes radicalization and allegiance to the ideology of the Islamic State.”

The emergence of ISIS-K as a deadly terrorist organization has made planning and directing attacks a growing problem around the world, several U.S. officials previously told NBC News.

In March, the group ordered an attack on the Crocus City Hall concert hall near Moscow, Russia, which killed 130 people and injured hundreds more.

It also launched an attack on Iran this year that killed dozens of people and disrupted other high-profile attacks in Europe.