The Afghan national was arrested after he posted a video of himself on TikTok indicating he was building a bomb with an intended target of the Fort Worth area in Texas.
Another Afghan national has been arrested after posting a TikTok video indicating he was building a bomb intended for the Fort Worth area in Texas,ย following the shooting incident near the White House in Washington, D.C., according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). According to Fox News, Mohammad Dawood Alokozay was taken into custody. Court records show he has been charged at the state level with making a terroristic threat.
DHS said that Alokozay entered the United States as part of Operation Allies Welcome under the Biden administration after the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, when the Taliban took over.ย
Alokozay was taken into custody on Tuesday โ one day before the shooting in Washington, D.C. โ by the Texas Department of Public Safety and an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in a coordinated law enforcement effort, Fox News reported, adding that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has since lodged a detainer on Alokozay following his arrest.
DC shooting and arrest of Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwalย
His arrest occurred just a day before a shooting near White House, involving another Afghan national, Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Lakanwal is accused of shooting two National Guard soldiers near the White House, killing one and leaving the other in critical condition.
Lakanwal also came to the US under Operation Allies Welcome. He had been living in Washington state and, according to a Trump administration official, applied for asylum in December last year and was granted approval in April. Investigators said he had no prior criminal record before the incident.
Later, CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed that Lakanwal had previously worked “with the US government, including the CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar.”
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Jeanine Pirro, US attorney for Washington, DC, said that more counts are likely to follow against suspect Rahmanullah Lakanwal. The upgraded charges of first-degree murder, instead of the initial charges of assault, raise the possibility for the suspected attacker to face the death penalty in the case.
Although capital punishment has been abolished in the District of Columbia, Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday said she will seek the death penalty against the man accused of shooting two West Virginia National Guard members in Washington, the Hill reported.
In August, US President Donald Trump had asserted that his government would seek capital punishment in every murder case that occurred in Washington, DC.
Meanwhile, Trump on Friday said that he would permanently pause migration from all “third-world countries” to allow the US system to terminate illegal admissions into the United States.
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