Afghan evacuee who served as liaison to Wisconsin community arrested in sexual assault investigation

A man brought to the U.S. as part of last year’s chaotic Afghan evacuation was arrested in Wisconsin on Monday after being accused of sexual assault.

Matiullah Matie, 40, had become well known locally after serving as a sort of liaison between new Afghan arrivals and Marathon County, in central Wisconsin.

Wausau police, in a brief statement, said a woman who was helping Mr. Matie with resettlement efforts reported being assaulted by him in a vehicle last week.

He was booked at the Marathon County Jail and released on a signature bond. Police said they are recommending a charge of fourth-degree sexual assault. He will have a court date in the next couple of weeks, police said.

Rep. Tom Tiffany, Wisconsin Republican, had warned the nongovernment agencies working to settle Afghan evacuees in communities to be on the lookout for problems.

“The burden is now on groups like yours to ‘say something’ if you ‘see something,’” he said in a letter to the state’s refugee resettlement groups.

Mr. Matie’s efforts to act as a leader in the evacuee community made him somewhat of a local political celebrity.

He hosted Wausau Mayor Katie Rosenberg and Police Chief Benjamin Bliven for milk tea last month to talk about their communities. The police department, in a web post, said the meeting also gave officers a chance to test out a language translation app that’s being used to help communicate with the new arrivals.

Mr. Matie has also met with Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, according to the Wausau Daily Herald.

Some 76,000 Afghans were airlifted out of Afghanistan last summer as the U.S. ended its 20-year military operations in the country.

They went through database checks at locations in third countries, then were brought to the U.S. where they stayed at military bases until they were processed and released for settlement in American communities.

In a Facebook page, Mr. Matie identified himself as a former senior adviser to the upper house of Afghanistan’s National Assembly, and says he’s now “Afghans community leader in Wausau.”

A profile in the Daily Herald on Jan. 31 said Mr. Matie arrived with his wife and six children. He was among first of what is expected to be about 85 Afghan evacuees resettled in Wausau.

He told the newspaper he’d been a tribal leader who connected with the U.S. Marines in 2009, offering his help.

He said that during the chaos of last summer, as the Afghan government was collapsing, Taliban militants killed his brother and another relative — the Herald said it was a “sister,” while WSAW quoted him saying it was an “older daughter.”

He said he had two narrow escapes himself. His family made it to the airport in Kabul on Aug. 26 and were on a U.S. evacuation flight out the next day — just beating the Aug. 31 end to U.S. operations.

They flew into Qatar, then Germany, before being flown in October to the U.S. The family landed in Philadelphia and traveled by bus to Fort Pickett in Virginia, where they remained until heading to Wisconsin at the end of December.

Military officials have said the crime rate among the evacuees is lower than what would be expected under the general U.S. population, but several high-profile cases have emerged.

In one, a 24-year-old evacuee who’d been housed at Quantico was convicted last month of sexual assault. Marines at the camp said they saw him kissing and groping a girl through her clothes, all over her body. She tried to push him away but he pulled her back.

A Marine investigator said Mohammed Tariq described his behavior as “really normal” in his culture, according to court documents.