Pentagon announces foreign military trainees will face new restrictions following Pensacola attack
The Pentagon announced Friday that it is introducing new restrictions on international military students undergoing training in the US that will ban them from possessing firearms. The new rules follow December’s deadly attack at a naval air station in Florida, which was carried out by a Saudi Air Force officer.
“Going forward we will put several new policies and security procedures in place to protect our people, programs, and installations. These include new restrictions on international military students for possession and use of firearms, and control measures for limiting their access to military installations and U.S. government facilities,” Garry Reid, the Director for Defense Intelligence (Counterintelligence, Law Enforcement, and Security) in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, told reporters Friday.
The new policies will also include new standards for training and education on detecting and reporting insider threats and will establish “new vetting procedures that include capabilities for continuous monitoring of international military students while enrolled in U.S.-based training programs,” Reid said.
Trainees will also be restricted in terms of how far they can travel away from their training location during their downtime, a restriction that US service members are also sometimes subjected to during training programs.
The Department of Justice has said that the 21-year-old Saudi Air Force second lieutenant, Mohammed Alshamrani, who killed three American sailors in the December shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola was motivated by jihadist ideology, and the Department of Justice concluded that his actions were an act of terrorism.
Earlier this week CNN reported that more than a dozen Saudi service members training at US military installations are being expelled from the country. The expelled students were not accused of aiding the Pensacola shooter but some are said to have connections to extremist movements and others were accused of possessing child pornography.
Following the attack the US military restricted the type of training being conducted by foreign military students from Saudi Arabia, confining them to classroom training while the Pentagon worked to review and enhance its vetting procedures for foreign students
When the new procedures are in place the Pentagon said that the Military Departments “will be authorized to fully resume the training that has been suspended since the attack in Pensacola.”
The Pentagon has long seen the benefit of training foreign military students in the United States, with thousands of officers having gone through various programs. These students are thought to help enhance the ability of allied militaries to conduct operations as well as bolster US influence abroad.
