An updated US indictment has identified the man prosecutors accuse of coordinating the September incident near RAF Fairford, providing further details about an alleged campaign against American and Jewish targets in Britain and Europe. Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, a 35-year-old Iraqi who previously lived in Britain, is accused of using contacts and associates to arrange terrorist attacks in the UK.
The indictment, released by the US Department of Justice on Tuesday, names al-Hassani and Mohsen Mohajeri as associates of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi. Both are believed to be in Iran. Investigators had hoped that taking al-Saadi into US custody in May would halt the attacks he was accused of encouraging and directing on Iran’s behalf, but prosecutors allege the activity continued.
Al-Saadi was arrested in Turkey in May and extradited to the United States within weeks. At his first appearance in a Manhattan courtroom in June, he called himself “a prisoner of war”. He is accused of being behind Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, known as Hayi, and of serving as a commander in Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi group backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
According to the 26-page indictment, al-Saadi tried to relay coded messages to his two associates through telephone conversations with family while awaiting trial in New York. During a call around 24 September, relatives told him that an associate named Ali had moved to the “International Section”. The FBI monitored the conversation. Prosecutors allege that al-Hassani had begun organizing preparations for the alleged Fairford plot in August.
British authorities have charged two men from London with assisting Iranian intelligence in violation of the 2023 National Security Act. They are awaiting trial and have yet to enter pleas. Westminster magistrates court heard in October that a handler called Ali had instructed the men in the vans to drive to Fairford. British courts will determine what happened during the incident.
Prime minister Andy Burnham told MPs in mid-October that the Revolutionary Guard was almost certainly responsible for Fairford. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood said the government considered it highly likely that a known individual in Iran had coordinated the incident, with direction almost certainly coming from the Guard.
The US case also links al-Hassani and Mohajeri to Hayi’s campaign in March and April. Prosecutors obtained a video dated 6 April showing Mohajeri urging al-Hassani to concentrate on London while they examined a map on a laptop. Six attacks in the capital followed shortly afterwards.
In one alleged operation, prosecutors say all three men directed an attacker through a FaceTime call at premises associated with the educational charity Jewish Futures in Hendon on 17 April. A man set fire to a plastic bag holding bottles of fluid outside the building and fled. The incident formed part of a series of arson attacks linked to Hayi against synagogues and other Jewish community locations in London.
