The Justice Department unsealed an eight-count superseding indictment Tuesday charging three men tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the militia Kata’ib Hizballah with plotting to bomb RAF Fairford, a British air base that houses American military aircraft and personnel.
The defendants are Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, Mohsen Mohajeri and Mohammad Ali Al-Hassani. Prosecutors say the plan involved three vans loaded with barrels of fuel, disguised with commercial decals to look like vehicles belonging to a fuel delivery company and a swimming pool supply business.
“Anyone who plans a terrorist plot on a military base housing American service members will be prosecuted by the United States government,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
According to the indictment, Al-Hassani directed associates in the United Kingdom to surveil the base in August, paying one person to film its perimeter. The group then obtained the vans and fuel barrels, researched chemical accelerants, and bought metal objects meant to be used as shrapnel in an explosion.
On September 26, Al-Hassani allegedly ordered the vans driven toward the base. At least two ran into a security roadblock and could not get through. British authorities seized all three vehicles and arrested the occupants the next morning.
Prosecutors say Al-Saadi helped run the operation from a jail cell in New York, where he was already awaiting trial on separate terrorism charges. He allegedly used coded phone calls with relatives in Iraq to pass instructions to his co-conspirators. On a September 24 call, he asked about Al-Hassani and told family members to “give him [al-Hassani] money so we can do it.”
Investigators link the plot to a string of attacks across Europe in March and April targeting synagogues, Jewish organizations, ambulances and an Israeli embassy, including the stabbing of two Jewish men in London. Prosecutors say the same network is responsible.
Al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national, was arrested abroad in May and brought into U.S. custody. He has previously been accused of helping direct roughly 18 attacks across Europe and of trying to coordinate an attack on a Manhattan synagogue.
All three defendants face charges including conspiracy to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations, financing terrorism, and conspiracy to bomb a place of public use. Some counts carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
