A former FBI translator was arrested on Saturday on charges of falsifying a translation and lying to investigators after his own voice appeared on an audio recording during the surveillance of a suspect in a terrorism investigation.

Abdirizak Jaji Raghe Wehelie, 66, who appeared in court on Monday, worked as “a linguist translating communications captured by court-authorized surveillance.” The Justice Department said, “Wehelie allegedly intentionally misidentified his own voice that was captured when Person A left a voicemail message on Wehelie’s mobile telephone,” and that he lied during questioning by the FBI.

According to the criminal indictment unsealed on Monday, “Person A was suspected of having conspired with and aided and abetted Person B, who traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab,” a terrorist organization with links to al Qaeda that has killed hundreds of people in terrorist attacks. The Justice Department said "Person B" was on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list. The individual is believed to be Liban Haji Mohamed, a former Virginia cab driver who left the U.S. to join al Shabab.

Wehelie was arrested Saturday night after returning from an international flight, and appeared in an Alexandria courtroom in the Eastern District of Virginia on Monday afternoon. He has been charged with seven counts of making false statements — related to allegedly misidentifying his own voice as an “unknown male” on an audio recording in a terrorism-related surveillance recording and then repeatedly lying to investigators — and with an eighth count of obstruction of justice. He faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. He is free on bond.



Former FBI translator Abdirizak Jaji Raghe Wehelie (Alexandria, Va., Sheriff’s Office via AP)

The indictment said in December 2012, Wehelie received a voicemail from Person A, and that message was captured on a recording, which he was asked to translate the very next day during government surveillance of Person A. Even though he knew it was his own voicemail, the Justice Department alleges Wehelie entered the name into the FBI’s system as an “unknown male” instead. The indictment further reveals that Wehelie had a longtime relationship with Person A, which he attempted to conceal from the FBI.

Wehelie allegedly “told the FBI agents that he did not know Person A very well,” but the Justice Department revealed that there were “179 unique telephone contacts” between the two of them between July 2010 and September 2017, and Wehelie was spotted at Person A’s store and cafe at least three different times. In July 2017, Wehelie finally “admitted that he and Person A’s father were very close and that he has known Person A since Person A was young” and that “Person A regarded Wehelie as an uncle.”

Wehelie is charged with entering false translations into the FBI’s system, lying to investigators during questioning, and obstructing a federal investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney James Gillis, with help from the Justice Department’s National Security Division, will prosecute the case.

This is not the first time that Wehelie’s family has been the subject of a terrorism-related controversy. Wehelie worked as a contractor for the FBI for a number of years despite his son Yusuf and his daughter Yahya finding themselves on the no-fly list after trips abroad in 2010.

Yusuf Wehelie was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2017 on felony weapons charges. Investigators said he had allegedly made “dangerous statements" to undercover agents about the Islamic State, including that he "would like to join the group abroad” and “would love to jihad.”

The former FBI translator is also involved in a 2018 lawsuit against the U.S. government filed by attorneys at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The advocacy group contends that many of the government’s counterterrorism watchlist efforts, such as its Terrorist Screening Database, “rely upon the inarticulate hunches of federal officials, rank profiling, and vulgar guilt-by-association practices.” The FBI says the watchlist “serves as a bridge between homeland security, law enforcement, the intelligence community, and select international partners for the purpose of sharing terrorism-related information.”

That case is being presided over by Judge Paula Xinis in the U.S. District Court of Maryland.