Afghan doctor with ties to terrorist group to be deported

A federal judge Friday ordered the immediate deportation of an Afghan doctor who prosecutors said passed coded messages to a terrorist group with ties to al-Qaeda.

U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell made the order after Hayatullah Dawari, 62, of Northeast Philadelphia, pleaded guilty to two counts of immigration fraud and admitted that he lied on his application for U.S. citizenship. Dalzell sentenced Dawari to two years in prison, but suspended the sentence and ordered that he be immediately deported.

At a hearing last month, prosecutors laid out the case against Dawari, saying that during a raid of his home in January, FBI agents found documents written in Pashto and hidden between glued pages of religious tracts. Federal authorities also intercepted a package meant for Dawari that included instructions to forward messages to various people across the United States.

Citing national security concerns, officials declined to describe the content of the messages, saying only that one of the messages directed urgent action.

In court Friday, Dawari admitted that he had long-standing ties to the terrorist group Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin. Prosecutors have described the group as "a virulently anti-Western insurgent group active in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

The governments of the United States, the European Union, and Canada have classified Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin as a terrorist group. Its founder, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has repeatedly called for jihad on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Dawari, who was not charged with terrorist activity, became a lawful permanent resident in 2008 and had applied for U.S. citizenship in 2013. Friday's action rendered him "permanently inadmissible to the United States," the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams was the prosecutor in the case. It was investigated by the FBI, other federal agencies, and Philadelphia police.