One of the two men arrested in Washington because they posed as federal officers for two years claimed to be linked to the Pakistani intelligence services, American justice said Thursday, April 7.
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Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, were arrested and detained by the FBI in Washington on Wednesday on charges of usurpation of office for claiming since February 2020 that they were with the Department of Homeland Security ( DHS) and having tried to
"curry favor"
with agents of the Secret Service, an elite agency responsible for protecting the American president and his wife.
According to the indictment, the two men provided expensive gifts or free housing in a luxury building in Washington where Arian Taherzadeh owned several apartments.
Haider Ali
"claimed to witnesses that he had connections with the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence services",
Assistant District Attorney Joshua Rothstein said during a Washington court hearing.
During the searches, the police found an American passport in his name containing Pakistani and Iranian visas, the latter dated between the summer of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, and the database of the American immigration services also shows that he has traveled to Istanbul and Doha in 2019, he explained.
The police also discovered an arsenal of weapons, ammunition, tactical and surveillance equipment, as well as a filing cabinet containing information on all the residents of the building, said the assistant prosecutor.
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These new elements could aggravate the charges against the two men who are currently facing a three-year prison sentence, said the prosecutor.
Both men claimed to be members of a DHS “special unit” investigating gangs and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
They displayed themselves with uniforms, weapons and documents that supported their claims and drove SUVs equipped with flashing lights similar to those used by federal agencies.
To fit in with the community of residents of the building, made up of members of federal security agencies, the military and congressional employees, the two men offered cell phones, drones, televisions or insignia of the law enforcement.
In particular, they offered to pay an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle worth $2,000 to an agent who was part of the protection team of the first lady, Jill Biden.
And for nearly a year, Arian Taherzadeh housed Secret Service and DHS agents free of charge in apartments with rents valued at more than $4,000 a month.
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"All Secret Service agents implicated in this case are under administrative suspension and prohibited from accessing
agency facilities, equipment and systems," it said in a statement.
