U.S. Charges Three Men in Iran-Backed Plot Against RAF Fairford and Nearly 20 Attacks

Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed an indictment on Tuesday charging three men with helping run a campaign of nearly 20 attacks on Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, including a planned assault on a British air base that housed American bombers and troops.

The eight-count superseding indictment, unsealed in Manhattan federal court, names Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, 32, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national; Mohsen Mohajeri, 48, an Iranian national; and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, 35, an Iraqi national. Only al-Saadi is in custody. Prosecutors did not disclose the whereabouts of the other two men.

Prosecutors say the men conspired to provide material support to Kata’ib Hizballah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, conspired to support acts of terrorism, and conspired to bomb a place of public use. Both groups have been designated by the U.S. government as foreign terrorist organizations, and prosecutors say al-Saadi was a Kata’ib Hizballah commander. Al-Saadi faces two additional counts, including attempted acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.

What prosecutors say happened at Fairford

According to the indictment, al-Hassani directed people in Britain to drive vans to RAF Fairford in September, some of them carrying barrels of fuel. He also paid the group to buy metal objects that could be used as shrapnel and to make the vehicles look like they were on fuel delivery work, according to the charging document cited by the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Police were called after midnight on Sept. 27, after a local farmer reported seeing a group of men with several white vans behaving suspiciously near the base. Five men were detained on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offenses, and a sixth suspect, a British-Iranian dual national, was arrested several days later. All of them were released on bail. British police linked the episode to Tehran, which has denied involvement. Last month, British prosecutors charged two British men with national security offenses over the incident.

RAF Fairford sits about 100 miles west of London and has hosted American bombers through decades of conflicts in the Middle East. Days after the September arrests, the U.S. military withdrew all of its B-1 bombers from the base and sent them back to their home bases in the United States. Flight-tracking data on Tuesday showed the U.S. had also removed at least a dozen aircraft from a second British base, RAF Mildenhall, after a reported threat from Iran.

A wider campaign, and the U.S. response

U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said the defendants “helped orchestrate a campaign of terror on behalf of terrorist organizations affiliated with Iran” that targeted Jewish communities in Europe and the United States and RAF Fairford, “housing American service members.” McDonald said the threat from Iran and Iran-backed groups “is not hypothetical, it is very real.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche said anyone who plans an attack on a base housing American troops “will be prosecuted by the United States government.”

Al-Saadi was first charged in May with directing attacks on U.S. and Israeli interests in retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran. Prosecutors said he and his associates planned or claimed at least 18 attacks in Europe, including the non-fatal stabbing of two Jewish men in London in April and arson attacks on synagogues, Israeli businesses and Jewish schools in Amsterdam, Munich and elsewhere. He pleaded not guilty in June, called himself a “prisoner of war,” and has been held without bail since. Prosecutors say he used coded language in calls with relatives from jail to direct that money be passed along to others who could carry out attacks. His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

No trial date has been set for the new counts. An indictment is an accusation, and each defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

Reporting based on coverage by the Associated Press and ASTIG.