DOJ charges Iran-linked operatives over plot to attack US troops at RAF Fairford with fuel-filled vans
Commander allegedly directed operation from New York prison cell via coded family calls, B-1 bombers withdrawn from base after September roadblock stop
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2 charged in alleged RAF Fairford terror plot
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Iran-backed terror suspect Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi pictured with weapons and a US map
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Mohammad Ali Al-Hassani and Mohsen Mohajeri meeting in Iraq with a map of London on a laptop
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Al-Saadi and Al-Hassani appear in video prosecutors say shows them directing an attack in Europe
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The US Justice Department has unsealed an eight-count superseding indictment charging three men — Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, Mohsen Mohajeri and Mohammad Ali Al-Hassani — with terrorism offences tied to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Kata'ib Hizballah over a plot to attack American personnel at RAF Fairford, a key US bomber base in England, using vans packed with barrels of fuel.
According to the indictment, Al-Hassani directed associates in the United Kingdom to conduct surveillance of the base in August and paid one individual to record video of the perimeter. The associates obtained three vans and barrels of fuel, researched chemical accelerants and purchased metal objects that could be used as explosive shrapnel, disguising the vehicles with commercial decals to resemble fuel delivery and swimming pool supply businesses. On September 26, Al-Hassani allegedly directed the drivers toward the base; at least two vans encountered a security roadblock and could not proceed. British authorities recovered all three vehicles and arrested their occupants the following morning. Roughly a dozen US B-1 bombers were subsequently withdrawn from the base.
The detail prosecutors want noticed: Al-Saadi allegedly helped coordinate the operation from inside a New York prison cell, where he was awaiting trial on separate terrorism charges. Prosecutors say he used telephone calls with family members in Iraq to relay coded messages, and in one September call asked relatives to 'give him money so we can do it'. In a July call, he allegedly asked his sister whether their 'old work' had been cancelled; she replied that it wasn't. Prosecutors have previously accused Al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national, of helping direct around 18 attacks across Europe — including the stabbing of two Jewish men in London — and of attempting to coordinate an attack on a Manhattan synagogue. They describe him as having worked closely with Qasem Soleimani, the IRGC Quds Force commander killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020, and as having warned Iran's former Supreme Leader three days before the US launched its war against the country.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said anyone planning a terrorist plot on a military base housing American service members 'will be prosecuted by the United States government'. Some charges carry a maximum of life in prison. Britain hosts the targets without being a belligerent in the war against Iran — and the alleged command post for the attack was a federal detention centre in Brooklyn.
Seven men arrested in the UK over the incident were initially released under strict conditions after no explosives were found in the vans; several were re-arrested in late October after British authorities said there was a high likelihood the IRGC was involved. Whether a man can genuinely run a terror network through monitored family phone calls from a jail cell — or whether prosecutors are stretching a coincidence of timing — is the question the trial will have to answer.