Iranian Operative Charged By US Prosecutors Over Plot To Attack UK Air Force Base
United States prosecutors say a jailed Iranian operative planned an attack on a British air base used by American bombers. They say he passed his orders on from his New York cell through coded calls to his family.
NEW YORK, Nov 11 – United States prosecutors say a jailed Iranian operative was behind the foiled RAF Fairford plot in England. They say he planned it from his cell in New York.
RAF Fairford is a Royal Air Force base. American B-1 bombers were based there.
A new indictment has identified the man as Mohammad Dawood al-Saadi, who holds both Iranian and Iraqi citizenship. He was already in custody when he began planning the attack.
According to prosecutors, he used phone calls to family members back home to coordinate the plot.
They say he sent his plans in coded messages during calls to his family. His family then passed them on to two other men. One was Mohsen Mohajeri, said to be an operative of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The other was another Iranian, Mohammad Ali al-Hassani.
Al-Hassani then gave tasks to others, the indictment says. Some were told to watch the base. Others were told to get vans and barrels of fuel.
They also looked into buying chemicals that could fuel a blast, and metal objects to use as shrapnel.
Prosecutors say the plan was to buy large amounts of chemicals that could be made into explosives. The attack was set for September.
They say al-Saadi planned it as revenge for the United States war in Iran. He is accused of links to Kata’ib Hezbollah, an armed group in Iraq, and to the Revolutionary Guards.
The plot fell apart on September 27. A farmer was driving home from a party when she saw vans blocking a road near the base. She reported it.
Police then arrested five men from London in the nearby village of Whelford. They were held on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offenses.
In the end, eight men were arrested and later released on bail. Last month, two British men, Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim and Nouman Essghir, both 24, were charged under Britain’s National Security Act.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the plot was “almost certainly” directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. After the incident, the United States moved its bombers out of Fairford.
The base is the European home for American bombers. The United States used it during its bombing campaign against Iran.
In July, the Revolutionary Guards issued a statement naming Fairford, saying that any base used by the United States to attack Iran was a legitimate target.
This is not the first time al-Saadi has been charged.
He was arrested while traveling abroad on May 1. He was handed to United States agents and brought to New York. Prosecutors had already charged him over links to 18 attacks in Europe. They also accuse him of planning to bomb a synagogue in New York.
Earlier filings said those attacks included a firebombing at a bank building in Amsterdam and a stabbing in London. Many of the targets were linked to Jewish communities.
In May, al-Saadi pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan court, telling the judge that he was a “prisoner of war.”
The new charges were announced by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
Jamie McDonald, the United States attorney, said the men had carried out a campaign of terror on behalf of groups linked to Iran.
He also added that they targeted Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, as well as the base housing American troops, and the men continued their activities even after one of them was detained, using coded messages and a network of associates abroad to keep the plans moving.
McDonald said the threat posed by Iran and the groups it supports was “not hypothetical; it is very real,” he added.
Iran has not commented on the new charges. It has previously denied claims that it was behind attacks in Europe.
The war between the United States and Iran began in February and has since settled into a stalemate.
