Local man’s ordeal in Iraq tied to immigration fraud
WASHINGTON — Roy Hallums’ first clue that something was up came when the FBI texted him with a bit of bizarre news.
More than a dozen years after the Memphis resident was kidnapped and held captive for 311 days in Iraq, his harrowing ordeal has been linked to an immigration fraud case in northern Virginia.
Two brothers and the sister-in-law of an Iraqi man convicted in Hallums’ kidnapping were arrested Tuesday and charged with hiding their connections to the captor. All three live in Fairfax County, Va., just outside of Washington, as legal permanent U.S. residents and have applied to become U.S. citizens.
“Mine’s an old story, but then to have it come up again and have one of the guys living in northern Virginia, that was a big surprise,” Hallums said Thursday.
Adding to the intrigue: The fingerprints of one of the brothers, Yousif Al Mashhadani, had been found on a document discovered in the underground bunker where Hallums had been held. The document was recovered when U.S. troops raided the bunker and a remote farmhouse and freed Hallums and other captives in 2005.
Hallums was blindfolded and tied up for most of his captivity, so he said he doesn’t know if he ever had any direct contact with Al Mashhadani.
“The gang and the people that held me — it’s all one family,” he said. “I’m talking extended family, like dozens of people. At any one time in the house, there might be four people.
There might be 20 people.”
Hallums was taken captive by a group of armed men on Nov. 1, 2004, from the compound in Baghdad where he worked for a Saudi Arabian contractor supplying food to the Iraqi armed forces. He was repeatedly bound, blindfolded and beaten before he was rescued by special operations forces nearly a year later.
Three years after Hallums was freed, Al Mashhadani was admitted to the United States as a refugee, according to court documents. He applied for naturalization as a U.S. citizen in 2013. His fingerprints were taken in connection with his citizenship application, and that’s when specialists discovered they matched the fingerprints on the document found in the bunker.
Al Mashhadani’s brother Adil Hasan and Hasan’s wife, Enas Ibrahim, also moved to the United States from Iraq in 2008. None of the three disclosed their ties to Majid Al Mashhadani, the convicted kidnapper, when they filled out a family tree on various applications and forms during the immigration process, prosecutors said.
Under questioning by the FBI, they later admitted withholding the information because they feared they would be denied permission to enter the United States, according to court documents. Each faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and deportation if convicted.
Hallums, who wrote a book about his captivity, is retired but gives occasional speeches and presentations. He said he’s waiting to hear if prosecutors need him to testify in the case. A hearing is set for Friday.
The arrests have gotten national attention because they come amid the debate over the need for tougher background checks for people entering the U.S. and President Donald Trump’s attempts to temporarily suspend immigration from six majority Muslim countries.
Asked whether the arrests show stricter vetting is needed, Hallums said, “I don’t want to get into the politics of it, but in my case, whoever was doing it, something went wrong.”
The document bearing Al Mashhadani’s fingerprints was recovered from the bunker in 2005, which meant it was in the possession of U.S. authorities for three years before he was given refugee status and allowed to enter the United States.
“Whatever system they had for him didn’t work,” Hallums said. “That’s pretty cut and dried.”