NEW YORK, N.Y. — Federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Tuesday unsealed an eight-count superseding indictment charging three men with terrorism offenses linked to close to 20 strikes, some carried out and some foiled, in Europe and the U.S. Among them was a September attempt on a British air base used by the American military.
Named in the case are Mohsen Mohajeri, a 48-year-old Iranian; al-Hassani, a 35-year-old Iraqi; and al-Saadi, 32, a dual citizen of Iraq and Iran. The Justice Department alleges the trio worked on behalf of Kata’ib Hizballah, an Iraqi militia, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Washington lists both as foreign terrorist organizations.
The base is RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, England, which housed U.S. military aircraft and personnel at the time. According to the indictment, al-Hassani, working from Iran, began paying associates in Britain in August, including one person hired to survey the base perimeter. The group allegedly acquired vans and fuel drums and gathered metal items that could serve as shrapnel.
Three vans headed toward the base on Sept. 26. Prosecutors say at least two were halted at a security checkpoint, and British authorities took all three and detained the people inside early the next morning. Britain had previously filed national security charges against two men in connection with the incident.
Prosecutors say al-Saadi, who was brought to the U.S. in May and has been jailed in New York awaiting trial on earlier terrorism charges, kept steering the network from behind bars by passing coded messages through family phone calls. Days before the Fairford attempt, he allegedly asked relatives to send money to al-Hassani.
The indictment also points to a wave of roughly 18 attacks last spring claimed by a group that prosecutors describe as a front for Kata’ib Hizballah. Seven of those took place in the United Kingdom, more than in any other European country. Targets included Jewish communities, with plots against synagogues in London and New York cited in the filings.
An indictment is an allegation, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
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