WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — The United States has charged three men it says worked for Iran over a string of attacks in Europe and the US, including a plot in September to drive fuel-laden vans to RAF Fairford, the British air base where American bombers were stationed during the war with Iran.
The Justice Department named them as Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, 32, who holds Iranian and Iraqi citizenship; Mohsen Mohajeri, 48, an Iranian; and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, 35, an Iraqi. It said they acted in support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iran-backed Iraqi group Kataib Hezbollah, and face eight terrorism-related counts. Al-Saadi is already in jail in New York awaiting trial on earlier charges. The other two are accused of acting from Iran.
Vans, fuel and shrapnel
According to the indictment, al-Hassani paid someone on August 22 to survey the base’s perimeter. In September, it says, he paid others to buy vans and barrels of fuel, research chemical accelerants and buy metal objects that could serve as shrapnel. The vans were made to look as if they belonged to a fuel delivery firm and a swimming pool supplier.
On September 26 he allegedly sent three vans towards the base and directed the drivers by phone. At least two were turned back at a security roadblock. In the early hours of September 27, a local farmer driving home spotted the vans and called the police, who declared a major incident. No explosives were found, but a quantity of petrol was seized.
Prosecutors say al-Saadi helped coordinate the plot from his cell in New York, passing coded messages to the other two in phone calls to his mother and sister in Iraq.
Eighteen attacks in Europe
The Justice Department says the three planned attacks carried out in Europe under the name of a new group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya. Of the 18 attacks it claimed in Europe this spring, seven were in Britain. They included arson, explosives and the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, north London, in April.
“These defendants helped orchestrate a campaign of terror on behalf of terrorist organizations affiliated with Iran,” said Jamie McDonald, the US attorney in Manhattan. “The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical – it is very real.” FBI Director Kash Patel said the indictment showed “the determination of Iran to commit terrorist attacks in Europe and the US”.
Al-Saadi pleaded not guilty to the earlier charges in June and called himself a “prisoner of war”. Iran’s embassy in London has said it “categorically rejects and strongly condemns” what it called “unfounded and malicious speculations” linking Iran to the incident.
Bombers withdrawn
Seven men were arrested in Britain after the incident and released on bail. Two British nationals have since been charged under the National Security Act with assisting Iran’s intelligence service. Days after the incident, the US withdrew all its B-1 bombers from Fairford, and on Tuesday flight-tracking data showed at least a dozen US aircraft leaving a second British base, RAF Mildenhall, after a reported threat from Iran.
