The updated charges were announced Friday by Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
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They came two days after 29-year-old Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal shot West Virginia National Guard members Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, just blocks from the White House.
Late Thursday night, US President Donald Trump announced that Beckstrom, who had been deployed to the capital as part of the president’s anti-crime campaign, had died of his wounds.
Pirro made the announcement on the Fox & Friends TV program a day after he said Lacanwal, a Washington state resident, will be charged with three counts of armed assault with intent to kill and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence.
“Lakanwal will now be charged with murder in the first degree,” he said Friday.
“There are certainly more charges to come, but we are upgrading the initial charges from assault to murder in the first degree.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi had previously said she would seek the death penalty if any soldiers died in the attack. The FBI said it was investigating the attack as “terrorism.”
National Guard member Wolfe remained in critical condition Friday.
‘collective punishment’
The advanced charges come shortly after the Trump administration promised a sweeping crackdown on immigration in the wake of the attack, as well as reining in immigrants already living in the US.
Advocacy groups have condemned these actions as “collective punishment”.
In a social media post Thursday night, Trump said he would “permanently halt immigration from all Third World countries”, expanding on a previous move to halt all immigration requests involving Afghan nationals.
Trump further pledged that “anyone who is not a pure asset to the United States of America, or is incapable of loving our country” would be removed.
After the administration had already said it would re-examine refugees and asylum seekers admitted to the US under former President Joe Biden, the director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said on Thursday that it would conduct a “full-scale, rigorous re-examination of every green card for every alien from every country of concern.”
The policy changed after more information came to light about the alleged attacker, Lakanwal.
Trump administration officials have repeatedly blamed the shootings on lax vetting policies during Biden’s Operation Afghan Welcome, in which thousands of Afghans were transferred to the US following the withdrawal of Western forces from the country.
US media have reported that Lakanwal was a member of an Afghan force that worked with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan, known as “Zero Unit”.
A friend told The New York Times that Lakanwal suffered mental health problems related to the unit’s conduct, which Human Rights Watch said included extrajudicial and civilian killings, among other abuses.
A government report seen by Reuters news agency showed that Laknawal had applied for asylum in December 2024.
However, the case was cleared in April, months after Trump took office for a second term, with officials taking note of his work with the US in Afghanistan. At that time no information was received to disqualify him.
Advocates have said the Trump administration is using the attack to push for more action on immigration.
Critics say that crackdown has targeted legal immigrants and vulnerable populations, including refugees seeking asylum from persecution.
Responding to the ban on Afghan immigration processing on Thursday, the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said, “collective punishment is never appropriate”.
“People fleeing violence, persecution and instability deserve protection and due process – not to be vilified for the alleged actions of a single individual,” the group said.
The Afghan-American Foundation called on elected leaders and the media to respond responsibly.
“Follow the facts, resist fear, and ensure this tragedy is not used to divide communities or break the ties that bind us,” it said in a statement.
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