The lone-wolf gunman who took hostages in an Australian café on Monday shows the need for people seeking political asylum to go through a vetting process, says Middle East expert Walid Phares.
Gunman Man Haron Monis, who was killed along with two hostages, was an Iranian refugee.
Appearing Monday on
Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren," Phares said Monis had been "mutating."
"He was an Iranian Shia. He came to Australia, applied for asylum, so he's against the Iranian regime," Phares said. "Then started to be anti-Western, anti-Australian, anti-American, and then he shifted to Salafi-jihadism from the Sunni side. So, he has been changing camps, but the one ideology was always anti-Western."
Western nations should do a better job of checking the ideology of people who say they are seeking political asylum, Phares said.
During his 25 years as an expert in political asylum cases, Phares said, he has seen many cases of people fleeing Egypt who later become jihadists.
"The question is not, 'Who are you afraid of?' [but] 'What do you want to do here?'" he said.
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