An Iraqi man living in Oregon who falsely claimed to be a US intelligence official in a letter to the prime minister of Iraq was sentenced Tuesday to two years on probation. Wathiq al-Ibraheemi, 34, pleaded guilty in January to unauthorized use of an official insignia, which was on the November 2015 letter sent to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.<\/p>\n
Assistant US Attorney Craig Gabriel said the three-page note suggesting the prime minister replace the country\u2019s intelligence chief with another man reached the highest levels of Iraqi government before it was turned over to the US officials.<\/p>\n
\u201c(His) deceptive and brazen conduct, in this case, created confusion and a brief period of diplomatic uncertainty between the United States government and the government of Iraq,\u201d Gabriel said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Al-Ibraheemi was expected to get one year on probation, but Gabriel sought the extra year after it was discovered that the Oregon man \u2013 or someone he knows \u2013 altered an online news article about his guilty plea.<\/p>\n
Al-Ibraheemi served as an interpreter for the US military in Iraq before immigrating to this country in 2009 and later earning a degree in mechanical engineering from Portland State University. His defense attorney, Colin Hunter, highlighted that service in seeking a lenient penalty from US District Judge Michael Mosman.<\/p>\n
The judge praised al-Ibraheemi\u2019s \u2018difficult, important and dangerous\u2019 work for United States forces in Iraq.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could have gone the rest of your life walking proudly down the streets of this country as someone to whom this country owed a debt of gratitude,\u201d Mosman said. \u201cNow it\u2019s deeply unfortunate that that debt of gratitude is stained, if not erased.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the letter, al-Ibraheemi represented himself as William J. Peterson, US chief of the Middle East Section in the Office of the Deputy Director for Intelligence. Investigators determined the employee and the position do not exist.<\/p>\n
The letter criticized intelligence head Zuhair al-Gharbawi and said the United States supported Dr. Mosdeq al-Janabi as his replacement during this \u2018critical time\u2019 in the history of Iraq.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe national security of Iraq is in the national security interest of the United States and the entire Middle East,\u201d the letter states. \u201cWe believe your government needs people like Dr. Mosdeq to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
The intelligence chief was dismissed in June 2016, but Gabriel said there\u2019s no evidence the letter was a factor. He was replaced by Mustafa Kadhimi.<\/p>\n
A few months after the letter was sent, a member of the Iraqi parliament reported receiving phone calls from a man who identified himself as \u2018Dr. William,\u2019 a US government representative seeking to influence who became speaker of the parliament.<\/p>\n
The US ambassador at the time, Stuart Jones, contacted the FBI, which traced the telephone number to Beaverton, Oregon.<\/p>\n
The FBI executed a search warrant at al-Ibraheemi\u2019s home and seized his laptop. Investigators found that he had downloaded the insignia of the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence before the letter to the prime minister was sent.<\/p>\n
The question of why al-Ibraheemi tried to influence Iraq policy remains unanswered. He declined to comment outside the Portland courtroom.<\/p>\n
Friends, co-workers and members of the military vouched for the defendant\u2019s character in letters to the judge. His mother urged Mosman not to send her son back to Iraq, where she feared he would be executed \u201con the very day of his arrival\u201d because of his previous work for US forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Iraqi man living in Oregon who falsely claimed to be a US intelligence official in a letter to the prime minister of Iraq was sentenced Tuesday to two years on probation. Wathiq al-Ibraheemi, 34, pleaded guilty in January to unauthorized use of an official insignia, which was on the November 2015 letter sent to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27657,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27655\/revisions\/27657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}