3 charged in US over alleged IRGC plot at UK air base
Photo: REUTERS
Federal prosecutors in the US have charged three men whom they describe as Iranian-backed operatives for orchestrating nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks across the US and Europe, including a plot targeting RAF Fairford, a key United Kingdom air base.
The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that the suspects - identified as Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, Mohsen Mohajeri, and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani - acted directly in support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah, facing formal “terrorism-related offenses”.
Al-Saadi remains imprisoned in New York, while prosecutors chose not to disclose the locations of Mohajeri and al-Hassani.
The charges unveiled on Tuesday focus heavily on RAF Fairford in southwest England, where the US military previously stationed forces and B-1 bombers deployed in its war against Iran.
Authorities launched an investigation in September after a local farmer reported seeing several men with white vans engaged in “suspicious” activity near the perimeter.
Law enforcement officers initially arrested seven men in connection with the incident before releasing them on bail, but then re-arrested two suspects on suspicion of aiding Iran’s intelligence service and charged them under the National Security Act.
Iran strongly denied any involvement, though the US military withdrew all of its B-1 bombers from Fairford days after the event.
According to a US charging document, al-Hassani, a 35-year-old Iraqi national, directed accomplices to drive toward the base in vans, several of which contained barrels of fuel.
Prosecutors revealed that al-Hassani had previously paid the group to procure metal objects to serve as shrapnel and to disguise the vehicles as fuel delivery trucks.
Meanwhile, prosecutors stated that al-Saadi, a 32-year-old dual citizen of Iran and Iraq, coordinated the operation by passing coded messages to al-Hassani and Mohajeri, a 48-year-old Iranian. Al-Saadi transmitted these instructions during telephone conversations with his mother and sister in Iraq using encrypted language.
Highlighting the gravity of the plot, Manhattan US Attorney Jamie McDonald said, “These defendants helped orchestrate a campaign of terror on behalf of terrorist organizations affiliated with Iran that targeted Jewish communities in Europe and the US, and the British military base, RAF Fairford, housing American service members. The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical - it is very real.”
Iran offered no immediate comment regarding the newly unsealed indictment.
US officials originally detailed initial charges against al-Saadi in May, accusing him of directing operatives to assault US, Israeli, and Jewish targets and kill Americans in retaliation for the US-Israel conflict with Iran.
Those earlier operations encompassed the nonfatal stabbing of two Jewish men in London in April, alongside arson strikes on synagogues, Israeli businesses, and Jewish schools across Europe. Al-Saadi has remained in US custody since May, where he pleaded not guilty in June, labeled himself a “prisoner of war”, and stayed in detention without bail.
Tuesday’s indictment officially incorporated his role in the Fairford plot while filing new charges against his two co-conspirators. In a related development on Tuesday, flight-tracking data indicated that the US military relocated at least a dozen aircraft from another UK site, RAF Mildenhall, following what the Wall Street Journal reported as an Iranian threat.
Source: Al Jazeera (adapted)
