Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Loretta Lynch Fully Opposes Obama on Gitmo

Posted on by

Say it isn’t so…pigs flying? Video calls between soccer or basketball games?

The Obama White House has a habit of altering assessments and reports especially noted by the CENTCOM scandal. The Obama regime also did the same with the assessment profiles of those forcibly released to other countries in an effort to close Gitmo. One such country that was betrayed by the Obama administration was Ghana. 

What is mind boggling is whether we should trust our President or the external people who are proving him wrong. According to US pundits, the said description as given by our leaders isn’t true for either of the men. Bin Atef in particular is a cause of concern. Long before his transfer, the intelligence analysts at Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessed him as a ‘high risk’ and ‘likely to pose a threat to the US, its interest and allies’. Atef is actually a fighter in Usama bin Laden’s former 55th Arab Brigade and an admitted member of the Taliban.

This is in sharp contrast to the claim by Mahama, who portrays the deal as an act of humanitarian assistance, likening the Yemeni men to non-threatening refugees who have been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities. More here.

Those former detainees released to Uruguay were to be managed and controlled by the government under the Memorandum of Understanding and release. Well, at least one has fled, allegedly to Brazil.

Exclusive: Justice Department opposes new Obama proposal on Guantanamo

Reuters: President Barack Obama is again facing dissent from within his administration – this time from Attorney General Loretta Lynch – over his plans to shutter the Guantanamo Bay military prison, according to senior administration officials.

Lynch, a former federal prosecutor whom Obama appointed to head the Justice Department two years ago, is opposing a White House-backed proposal that would allow Guantanamo Bay prisoners to plead guilty to terrorism charges in federal court by videoconference, the officials said.

Over the past three months, Lynch has twice intervened to block administration proposals on the issue, objecting that they would violate longstanding rules of criminal-justice procedure.

In the first case, her last-minute opposition derailed a White House-initiated legislative proposal to allow video guilty pleas after nearly two months of interagency negotiations and law drafting. In the second case, Lynch blocked the administration from publicly supporting a Senate proposal to legalize video guilty pleas.

“It’s been a fierce interagency tussle,” said a senior Obama administration official, who supports the proposal and asked not to be identified.

White House officials confirmed that President Obama supports the proposal. But the president declined to overrule objections from Lynch, the administration’s top law-enforcement official.

“There were some frustrations,” said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The top lawyer in the land has weighed in, and that was the DOJ’s purview to do that.”

If enacted into law, the Obama-backed plan would allow detained terrorism suspects who plead guilty to serve their sentences in a third-country prison, without setting foot on U.S. soil. The plan would thus sidestep a Congressional ban on transferring detainees to the United States, which has left dozens of prisoners in long-term judicial limbo in Guantanamo, the American military enclave in Cuba.

Obama has vowed to close the prison on his watch. But while he has overseen the release of some 160 men from the prison, the facility still holds 80 detainees.

The video plea plan has broad backing within the administration, including from senior State Department and Pentagon officials. A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment.

The most enthusiastic backers of the plan have been defense lawyers representing up to a dozen Guantanamo Bay detainees who are eager to extricate their clients from seemingly indefinite detention.

Republicans in Congress have opposed the president’s plans to empty the prison, on the grounds that many of the detainees are highly dangerous. But there is some bipartisan support for the proposal as well, a rarity in the Guantanamo debate.

Kevin Bishop, a spokesman for Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican voice on defense and national security issues, said Graham was “intrigued” by the proposal.

While support from a Republican senator would by no means guarantee the votes needed to pass, it does give the proposal a better chance than schemes that would transfer detainees from the Cuban enclave to the United States.

Obama views the video feed proposal as a meaningful step toward closing the facility and making good on one of his earliest pledges as president, administration officials said.

 

Of the 80 prisoners remaining in Guantanamo, roughly 30 have been approved for transfer to third countries by an interagency review board. Most of those 30 men are expected to be released from Guantanamo in coming weeks, according to administration officials.

The officials said they think that as many as 10 more prisoners could be added to the approved-for-transfer list by the review board. Finally, another 10 detainees are standing trial in military commissions.

That leaves roughly 30 detainees whom the government deems too dangerous to release but unlikely to be successfully prosecuted in court. As a result, those men would likely have to be transferred to detention in the United States if the prison were closed.

Administration officials say that allowing video feeds could reduce that number to somewhere between 10 and 20. The administration believes that with such a small number of prisoners requiring transfer to the United States, it would be easier to win support for closing the facility, which is run by a staff of 2,000 military personnel.

“This is the group that gives the president the most heartburn,” said the senior administration official.

Lynch and her deputies at the Justice Department argued that the laws of criminal procedure do not allow defendants to plead guilty remotely by videoconference.

Even if Congress were to pass the law, Lynch and her aides have told the White House that federal judges may rule that such pleas are in effect involuntary, because Guantanamo detainees would not have the option of standing trial in a U.S. courtroom.

A defendant in federal court usually has the option to plead guilty or face a trial by jury. In the case of Guantanamo detainees, the only option they would likely face is to plead guilty or remain in indefinite detention.

“How would a judge assure himself that the plea is truly voluntary when if the plea is not entered, the alternative is you’re still in Gitmo?” said a person familiar with Lynch’s concerns about the proposal. “That’s the wrinkle.”

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainee Majid Khan, a 36-year-old Pakistani citizen, first proposed allowing Khan to plead guilty by videoconference in a legal memo submitted to the Department of Justice in November. In 2012, Khan confessed in military court to delivering $50,000 to Qaeda operatives who used it to carry out a truck bombing in Indonesia, and to plotting with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, on various planned strikes.

Senate investigators found internal CIA documents confirming that Khan’s CIA interrogators subjected him to forced rectal feedings. Khan’s lawyers say the experience amounted to rape. He was also water-boarded.

That treatment makes it difficult for the Department of Justice to successfully prosecute Khan in federal court, according to administration officials.

When White House officials learned that Khan and other detainees were ready to plead guilty to terrorism charges in federal court, they thought they had found a solution.

Efforts to try detainees, including Mohammed and other Sept. 11 suspects, in military tribunals at Guantanamo have bogged down over legal disputes. Only eight defendants have been fully prosecuted. Three verdicts have been overturned.

“The beauty of a guilty plea is you don’t need a trial,” said the senior administration official who supports the video plea proposal.

In February, senior Obama aides proposed pushing ahead with video guilty pleas at an interagency meeting at the White House on the closure of Guantanamo, according to officials briefed on the meeting.

Justice Department officials said they opposed video guilty pleas. Matthew Axelrod, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, said the proposal would violate laws of criminal procedure, according to the officials.

The meeting ended with an agreement to pursue new legislation allowing the guilty pleas, the officials said, which the Department of Justice supported.

One week later, President Obama rolled out his plan to close the prison in a nationally televised announcement from the Roosevelt Room. Obama’s plan included seeking “legislative changes … that might enable detainees who are interested in pleading guilty” in U.S. federal courts.

Administration officials spent much of the next two months drafting the new law. On a Friday afternoon in mid-April, White House staff emailed all the involved agencies with a final draft of the bill, according to the officials. The bill would be submitted to Congress the following Monday, the White House email said.

That weekend, Lynch intervened unexpectedly and said the Justice Department opposed the bill. The eleventh-hour move frustrated White House staff. Deciding again to not overrule Lynch, the White House shelved the bill.

In late May, White House officials found a sympathetic lawmaker who inserted language authorizing video pleas into the annual defense spending bill. The White House drafted a policy memo publicly supporting the proposal, which is known as a Statement of Administration Policy, or SAP.

Lynch opposed the idea, according to administration officials, sparking renewed tensions between the Justice Department and White House.

A SAP is the president’s public declaration on the substance of a bill, according to Samuel Kernell, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego. Without one, it’s often more difficult to get lawmakers on the fence to vote the way the White House wants.

The White House again bowed to Lynch’s objections and declined to issue the SAP.

Doctors Being Slaughtered in Syria

Posted on by

Not only are good Syrian doctors hiding wounded patients, they are reaching out to other doctors globally for help. So, really, where are all the global human rights activists, where is their outrage?

   

In the past five years, the Syrian government has assassinated, bombed, and tortured to death almost seven hundred medical personnel, according to Physicians for Human Rights, an organization that documents attacks on medical care in war zones. (Non-state actors, including ISIS, have killed twenty-seven.) Recent headlines announced the death of the last pediatrician in Aleppo, the last cardiologist in Hama. A United Nations commission concluded that “government forces deliberately target medical personnel to gain military advantage,” denying treatment to wounded fighters and civilians “as a matter of policy.”

In response, some doctors established secret medical units to treat people injured in the crackdown. One surgeon at Aleppo University Hospital adopted the code name Dr. White. Along with three colleagues, he identified and stocked safe houses where emergency operations could be performed. Dr. White also lectured at the university’s faculty of medicine; he suspected that seven of his most promising students shared his sympathies toward the nascent uprising. Another doctor, named Noor, recruited them to join the mission. In Arabic, noor means “light,” so the group called itself Light of Life.

At night, Noor and Dr. White gave the medical students lessons via Skype, concealing their faces and voices. The goal was to teach them the principles of emergency first aid, with an emphasis on halting the bleeding from gunshot wounds. During demonstrations, the students waited in cars and vans to shuttle injured protesters to the safe houses, then disappeared. “They had to leave the house before my arrival,” Dr. White told me during a recent Skype call from Aleppo. “They could not know who this man is.”

More here.

More than 700 doctors killed in Syria war: UN

Attacks on hospitals since Syria’s war broke out five years ago have left more than 700 doctors and medical workers dead, many of them in air strikes, UN investigators said Tuesday.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria also condemned horrific violations by jihadists and voiced concern that Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants may have recruited hundreds of children into their ranks.

Commission chief Paulo Pinheiro told the UN Human Rights Council that widespread, targeted aerial attacks on hospitals and clinics across Syria “have resulted in scores of civilian deaths, including much-needed medical workers.”

“More than 700 doctors and medical personnel have been killed in attacks on hospitals since the beginning of the conflict,” he said.

Pinheiro, who was presenting the commission’s latest report to the council, said attacks on medical facilities and the deaths of so many medical professionals had made access to health care in the violence-wracked country extremely difficult — and in some areas completely impossible.

– ‘Terrorised survivors’ –

“As civilian casualties mount, the number of medical facilities and staff decreases, limiting even further access to medical care,” he said.

Pinheiro also denounced frequent attacks on other infrastructure essential to civilian life, such as markets, schools and bakeries.

“With each attack, terrorised survivors are left more vulnerable,” he said, adding that “schools, hospitals, mosques, water stations … are all being turned into rubble.”

Since March 2011, Syria’s brutal conflict has left more than 280,000 people dead and forced half the population to flee their homes.

War broke out after President Bashar al-Assad’s regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against protesters demanding political change in Arab Spring-inspired protests.

It has since become a multi-front war between regime forces, jihadists and other groups with the civilian population caught in the crossfire.

Pinheiro said the commission was investigating allegations that the Al-Nusra Front “and other Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups have recruited hundreds of children under 15 in Idlib” in northwestern Syria.

The brutality of Syria’s conflict is preventing millions of children from attending school, and activists have warned this is helping fuel jihadist recruitment drives.

Pinheiro also condemned violations committed by the Islamic State group.

In a report published last week, the commission warned that IS jihadists were continuing to commit genocide against the Yazidi minority in Iraq and Syria.

In 2014, IS jihadists massacred members of the Kurdish-speaking minority mainly based around Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq, forcing tens of thousands to flee, and captured thousands of girls and women.

– ‘Stop the genocide’ –

“As we speak, Yazidi women and girls are still sexually enslaved, subjected to brutal rapes and beatings. They are bought and sold in markets, passed from fighter to fighter like chattel, their dignity being ripped from them with each passing day,” Pinheiro said Tuesday.

“Boys are taken from their mother’s care and forced into ISIS training camps once they reach the age of seven,” he said, using another acronym for IS as he called on the international community to act “to stop the genocide.”

Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of the Iraqi parliament, also appealed for action.

“We need the (UN) Security Council to bring this … to the International Criminal Court” in the Hague, she told reporters on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council.

Dakhil said 3,200 Yazidi women and girls are still being held by IS, while around 1,000 boys under the age of 10 are being brainwashed and prepared for battle by the jihadists.

“This is still happening,” she said. “We need help.”

Around 400,000 Yazidis are still living in camps in northern Iraq, Dakhil said, adding that they still feared returning to Sinjar to rebuild their communities, since some of their Sunni Muslim neighbours had helped IS in its attacks.

“We need to rebuild peace … and trust,” she said. More from DailyMail.

 

Russian Hackers Also Hit the Clinton Foundation

Posted on by

So, global adversaries came to understand early that much of the covert and diplomatic work and connections by Hillary Clinton during her term as senator and later as Secretary of State was going on in a dual location, meaning the Clinton Foundation and the U.S. State Department. So….let the hacking begin, and they did.

Now there is a question: Are there more than one servers? Evidence speaks to the answer, YES. See this item from Forbes where there are clues.

 

Records reveal that Hillary Clinton’s private clintonemail.com server shared an IP address with her husband Bill Clinton’s email server, presidentclinton.com, and both servers were housed in New York City, not in the basement of the Clintons’ Chappaqua, New York home.

Web archives show that the Presidentclinton.com Web address was being operated by the Clinton Foundation as of 2009, when Hillary Clinton registered her own clintonemail.com server.

Numerous Clinton Foundation employees used the presidentclinton.com server for their own email addresses, which means that they were using email accounts that, if hacked, would have given any hacker complete access to Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails, as well. More here.

Clinton Foundation Said to Be Breached by Russian Hackers

Bloomberg: The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation was among the organizations breached by suspected Russian hackers in a dragnet of the U.S. political apparatus ahead of the November election, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The attacks on the foundation’s network, as well as those of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, compound concerns about her digital security even as the FBI continues to investigate her use of a personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state.

A spokesman for the foundation, Brian Cookstra, said he wasn’t aware of any breach. The compromise of the foundation’s computers was first identified by government investigators as recently as last week, the people familiar with the matter said. Agents monitor servers used by hackers to communicate with their targets, giving them a back channel view of attacks, often even before the victims detect them.

For a primer on recent cyber intrusions, click here.

Before the Democratic National Committee disclosed a major computer breach last week, U.S. officials informed both political parties and the presidential campaigns of Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders that sophisticated hackers were attempting to penetrate their computers, according to a person familiar with the government investigation into the attacks.

The hackers in fact sought data from at least 4,000 individuals associated with U.S. politics — party aides, advisers, lawyers and foundations — for about seven months through mid-May, according to another person familiar with the investigations.

Thousands of Documents

The thefts set the stage for what could be a Washington remake of the public shaming that shook Sony in 2014, when thousands of inflammatory internal e-mails filled with gossip about world leaders and Hollywood stars were made public. Donor information and opposition research on Trump purportedly stolen from the Democratic Party has surfaced online, and the culprit has threatened to publish thousands more documents.

A hacker or group of hackers calling themselves Guccifer 2.0 posted another trove of documents purportedly from the DNC on Tuesday, including what they said was a list of donors who had made large contributions to the Clinton Foundation.

The Republican Party and the Trump campaign have been mostly silent on the computer attacks. In an earlier statement, Trump said the hack was a political ploy concocted by the Democrats.

Information about the scope of the attacks and the government warnings raises new questions about how long the campaigns have known about the threats and whether they have done enough to protect their systems.

The Clinton campaign was aware as early as April that it had been targeted by hackers with links to the Russian government on at least four recent occasions, according to a person familiar with the campaign’s computer security.

U.S. Inquiries

The U.S. Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency are all involved in the investigation of the theft of data from the political parties and individuals over the last several months, one of the people familiar with the investigation said. The agencies have made no public statements about their inquiry.

The FBI has been careful to keep that investigation separate from the review of Clinton’s use of private e-mail, using separate investigators, according to the person briefed on the matter. The agencies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin said that he couldn’t comment on government briefings about cyber security and that the campaign had no evidence that its systems were compromised.

“We routinely communicate and cooperate with government agencies on security-related matters,” he said. “What appears evident is that the Russian groups responsible for the DNC hack are intent on attempting to influence the outcome of this election.”

The DNC wouldn’t directly address the attacks but said in a written statement that it believes the leaks are “part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians.”

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment about the government warnings. The Republican National Committee didn’t respond to e-mail messages. A Sanders spokesman, Michael Briggs, said he wasn’t aware of the warnings.

IDing the Hackers

The government’s investigation is following a similar path as the DNC’s, including trying to precisely identify the hackers and their possible motives, according to people familiar with the investigations. The hackers’ link to the Russian government was first identified by CrowdStrike Inc., working for the Democratic Party.

A law firm reviewing the DNC’s initial findings, Baker & McKenzie, has begun working with three additional security firms — FireEye Inc., Palo Alto Networks Inc. and Fidelis Cybersecurity — to confirm the link, according to two people familiar with the matter, underscoring Democrats’ concerns that the stolen information could be used to try to influence the outcome of the November election.

A spokesman for Baker & McKenzie didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. DNC spokesman Luis Miranda said the party worked only with CrowdStrike.

If the Democrats can show the hidden hand of Russian intelligence agencies, they believe that voter outrage will probably outweigh any embarrassing revelations, a person familiar with the party’s thinking said.

So far the released documents have revealed little that is new or explosive, but that could change. Guccifer 2.0 has threatened to eventually release thousands of internal memos and other documents.

Line of Attack

Sensitive documents from the Clinton Foundation could have the most damaging potential. The Trump camp has said it plans to make the foundation’s activities a subject of attacks against Clinton; the sort of confidential data contained in e-mails, databases and other digital archives could aid that effort.

An analysis by Fidelis confirmed that groups linked to Russian intelligence agencies were behind the DNC hack, according to a published report.

The government fills a crucial gap in flagging attacks that organizations can’t detect themselves, said Tony Lawrence, a former U.S. Army cyber specialist and now chief executive officer of VOR Technology, a computer security company in Hanover, Maryland.

“These state actors spend billions of dollars on exploits to gather information on candidates, and nine times out of ten [victims] won’t be able to identify or attribute them,” he said.

Google Accounts

Bloomberg News reported Friday that the hackers who hit the DNC and Clinton’s campaign burrowed much further into the U.S. political system than initially thought, sweeping in law firms, lobbyists, consultants, foundations and policy groups in a campaign that targeted thousands of Google e-mail accounts and lasted from October through mid-May.

Data from the attacks have led some security researchers to conclude that the hackers were linked to Russian intelligence services and were broadly successful in stealing reports, policy papers, correspondence and other information. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, denied that the Russian government was involved.

Russia uses sophisticated “information operations” to advance foreign policy, and the target audience for this kind of mission wouldn’t be U.S. voters or even U.S. politicians, said Brendan Conlon, who once led a National Security Agency hacking unit.

“Why would Russia go to this trouble? Simple answer — because it met their foreign policy objectives, to weaken the U.S. in the eyes of our allies and adversaries,” said Conlon, now CEO of Vahna Inc., a cyber security firm in Washington. Publishing the DNC report on Trump “weakens both candidates — lists out all the weaknesses of Trump specifically while highlighting weaknesses of Clinton’s security issues. The end result is a weaker president once elected.”

Russia Link

Russia has an expansive cyber force that it has deployed in complex disinformation campaigns throughout Europe, according to intelligence officials.

BfV, the German intelligence agency, has concluded that Russia was responsible for a 2015 hack against the Bundestag that forced shutdown of its computer systems for several days. Germany is under “permanent threat” from Russian hackers, said BfV chief Hans-Georeg Maassen.

Security software maker Trend Micro said in May that Russian hackers had been trying for several weeks to steal data from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party, and that they also tried to hack the Dutch Safety Board computer systems to obtain an advance copy of a report on the downing of a Malaysian aircraft over Ukraine in July 2014. The report said the plane was brought down by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile.

The cyber attacks are part of a broader pattern of state-sponsored hacking by Russia focused on political targets, with a goal of giving Russia the upper hand in dealing with other governments, said Pasi Eronen, a Helsinki-based cyber warfare researcher who has advised Finland’s Defense Ministry.

 

Obama’s Retribution Against Florida, Orlando Terror Attack

Posted on by

Shameful…yet this administration knows no shame. Reprehensible….

      

FEMA denies request for emergency declaration following Pulse shooting

OrlandoSentinel: A request to the federal government to declare an emergency for the state of Florida following the Pulse nightclub shooting was denied today, according to statement from Gov. Rick Scott‘s office.

“Because your request did not demonstrate how the emergency response associated with this situation is beyond the capability of the State and affected local governments… your request for an emergency declaration is denied,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in a letter to Scott.

On Twitter, Scott called the denial “disappointing” and “unthinkable.”

If grated, the formal declaration of emergency would have made available $5 million in federal funding.

Scott said the money would have been used to cover the expense of provisions for health and safety measures and managing, controlling and reducing the immediate threat to public health and safety.

“It is incredibly disappointing that the Obama Administration denied our request for an Emergency Declaration,” Scott said on Twitter. “It is unthinkable that (the president) does not define the Orlando terror attack, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, as an emergency.

“We’re committing every state resource possible to help the victims and the community heal and we expect the same from the federal government.”

Scott’s office has 30 days to appeal the denial.

Despite the denial, the federal government will allocate $253,000 to pay for overtime for the first responders who assisted the victims of the Pulse shooting, Scott’s office said.

FEMA Letter

 

 

Here is One That Should Have Received a Visa, But…

Posted on by

Athens, Greece – Working for the US Army in Afghanistan can get you killed, but there’s a silver lining.

  

The US Army offers its Afghan translators the right to request the Special Immigration Visa (SIV). It’s a program initiated by the US to help certain foreign employees leave their home countries and get on a path to permanent residency in the states—usually for protection from groups like the Taliban. For the last four years, the program has been renewed in the National Defense Authorization Act. This year, however, both the House of Representatives and the Senate failed to vote for the allocation of more visas, which could imperil remaining applicants.

Through that program, Muhammad, a former US Army translator in Afghanistan that I met in the port of Piraeus, Greece, should already be in the US. But like several other forgotten Afghan translators who served the United States, his visa has not come through. After being laid off by his army base in 2014, Muhammad fell into a bureaucratic gap between the United States’ promises to its employees in Afghanistan, and its rocky attempt to withdraw from the country.

Muhammad applied for the SIV in 2014. He was rejected in May 2015. According to the rejection email, his application was ruled invalid on the grounds of “Lack of faithful and valuable service.” Muhammad says that’s because he was fired—but not for lack of faithfulness or value. 2014 was simply the year that the Obama administration started closing army bases, in an early phase of withdrawal from Afghanistan. With fewer bases and fewer troops, fewer translators were needed. Muhammad was downsized by government contractor Mission Essential.

So in January 2016, he decided to make a go of it on his own. He paid $5,500 in smuggling fees to be trafficked from Afghanistan to Iran, from Iran to Turkey, and then from Turkey to Greece. By the time he arrived in the port of Piraeus in March, the 22-year-old’s life had been reduced to the phone in his pocket, the clothes on his back, and a sheaf of papers from his job with the United States Army.

His service and his perfect English together, in theory, put him in a better position than most refugees, but because he is Afghan, he isn’t even eligible for any of the expedited European relocation measures that the Syrian and Iraqi refugees sheltering in the port can claim.

Today he lives in limbo in a tent outside the port’s E1 terminal, where he can watch the Greek ferries come and go, bearing tourists to their summer holidays.

A life-threatening profession

Muhammad says that he was well aware his job translating between US and Afghan forces in the city of Khost came with a death sentence from Taliban insurgents, who oppose the current government and US intervention. He never told anyone, not even his family, what he did for a living.

“I was trying to keep a low profile,” he says, sitting cross-legged next to a ship bollard in the port. He forks a clump of rice from crinkled plastic tray on the ground in front of him. If anyone asked about his work in Afghanistan, he says, he told them he was going to school. These days, he’ll tell anyone who’ll listen.

In an Oct. 2014 episode of Last Week Tonight, US comedian John Oliver highlighted the bureaucratic nightmare that Iraqi and Afghan translators have to deal with in applying for an SIV—and the US system’s inability to take into account individual circumstances and dangers. One Afghan translator interviewed by Oliver had to wait three years and four  months between applying for his SIV and arriving in the United States. In that time, the Taliban killed his father and kidnapped his younger brother.

In April 2016, Muhammad met someone who nearly met a similar fate: another former Afghan translator for the US army named Ahmad. Until Jan. this year, 25-year-old Ahmad worked for the US army in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Knowing the dangers of his job, he applied for his SIV in 2014, but the paperwork moved slowly. He went back to work on the base.

In Dec. 2015, Ahmad’s family in Kabul received a letter from the Taliban, which threatened to kill his parents if he kept working for American troops. The next month, in January 2016, Ahmad decided he could not wait for a visa any longer, and decided to flee Afghanistan with his younger brother. They paid smugglers nearly $11,000, and got as far as Piraeus. Like Muhammad, the two brothers now camp in the port. Ahmad has not yet tried to restart his visa application process.

The SIV process has five basic steps, which include several phases of petition and permission before actually applying for the visa. The State Department estimates that this entire process takes 357 business days—but clearly, it can also take much longer.

“The single biggest cause for delay is security checks,” says Betsy Fisher, policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), which provides legal assistance to refugees. A puzzling problem, considering that anyone who has worked as a translator on a US army base in a conflict zone, has already undergone extensive security checks, including periodic polygraph tests.

Those who make it to the United States…

With patience, some Afghan translators do make it to the United States. Hamed, who asked to go by his first name only, is a former translator who worked for the US Army in the provinces of Khost and Paktika between 2010 and 2015. He began his SIV application in 2012. His application was approved the next year, but he did not receive his visa until early 2015. Luckily, he and his family survived the wait.

“I told them I want to leave as quick as possible,” Hamed told Quartz about the sense of urgency he felt after multiple threats due to his work for the Army. When he got word one night that he was finally cleared to leave, he says, he was so overcome with joy that he couldn’t sleep. In May 2015, he and his family boarded a plane to the United States.

But their departure has not had an entirely happy ending. In Afghanistan, Hamed’s wife was in her last semester of law school in Afghanistan, but they left before she could finish. Hamed has a degree in information technology, but in Woodbridge, Virginia, where they now reside, he has only been able to find a job in fast food.

…and those who don’t

Today, fewer than 4,000 SIV visas are still available, according to Fisher. Roughly 10,000 SIV applicants are currently waiting for a decision.

With the Balkan route that saw a million refugees work their way into Europe in 2015 effectively shut down, Muhammad and Ahmad’s only options are to wait, apply for asylum in Greece, or go home again. Asylum in Greece is not an option, says Muhammad. “This is not a country which can bear refugees,” he says of its record-high unemployment and the economically paralyzing effects of austerity. “Greeks already have too many problems.”

Despite being stonewalled by US immigration authorities, he carries with him at all times proof of his years of army service: copies of letters of recommendation from two sergeants he worked for, as well as certificates commending his work—just in case they might come in handy.

“I have no idea what to do,” he says.