Federal prosecutors have charged three men and accused them of plotting nearly 20 attacks in Europe and the United States, saying they were backed by Iran and attempted an assault on a British air force base used by the U.S. military.
The Department of Justice said Tuesday one of the men, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national, coordinated from jail an attempted plot on Britain’s Fairford base west of London in September.
The indictment offers new insight into the events at the base used by U.S. forces, more than a month after British police arrested seven people on suspicion of terrorism offenses when three vans were spotted outside the base. Two men were charged by British police, and Pentagon commanders later evacuated a fleet of long-range B-1 bombers from the site.
Al-Saadi conspired with his co-defendants from jail by passing them coded messages through third parties, authorities said.
Al-Saadi was already in U.S. custody after he was charged in May with working with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Kata’ib Hizballah and other U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations to plan attacks on Jewish communities in Europe and on a synagogue in New York.
The latest allegations were outlined in an indictment in New York charging al-Saadi, Iranian national Mohsen Mohajeri and Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national, with eight terrorism offenses in relation to the Fairford incident and other activities across Europe.
According to the indictment, al-Hassani and Mohajeri were both in Iran at the time of the Fairford arrests and relied on a network of contacts in Britain.
It alleges al-Hassani tasked and paid several people to help him by sourcing vans and barrels of fuel, researching the purchase of chemical accelerants and buying metallic objects that could be used as shrapnel.
Three of the vans containing fuel were stopped by British authorities. Iran has denied involvement in the Fairford incident.
“Anyone who plans a terrorist plot on a military base housing American servicemembers will be prosecuted by the United States government,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche in a statement Tuesday.
Jamie McDonald, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the defendants “helped orchestrate a campaign of terror.”
“The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical — it is very real,” McDonald added.
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