Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a 32-year-old Iraqi national, is accused of having “directed and urged others to attack U.S. and Israeli interests, including by killing Americans and Jews” on behalf of Kata'ib Hezbollah, a powerful Iraqi Shiite militia backed by Iran, according to the criminal complaint.
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“In my 18 years in government, I have not seen a threat environment quite like this one,” Tisch said at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side, which was not a target of the plot. “Today’s case is a stark example of how these tensions that originate overseas translate into violence.”
"The attack never occurred because the defendant was, in fact, plotting with an undercover law enforcement officer,” she said, adding that “the threat was identified, monitored and controlled from the outset."
According to the complaint, Al-Saadi agreed to pay an undercover informant $10,000 for the attacks on the synagogue and two Jewish centers. In a recorded call, he reportedly told the undercover agent that he would send them the full $10,000 if they would “set the three locations on fire at the same time.”
The complaint also accused Al-Saadi and co-conspirators of carrying out a bomb attack against the Bank of New York Mellon building in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in mid-March, and an attempted attack on the Bank of America building in Paris, France, on March 28.
Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute and an expert on Iran-backed militias, described Al-Saadi as “like the Iranian Jack Ryan,” referring to the fictional CIA operative created by author Tom Clancy.
No Iran proxy group has ever successfully killed an American on American soil, but Kata'ib Hezbollah has been linked to numerous attempts to “kill Americans all the time in Iraq, Jordan, and has succeeded in doing so,” Knights says.
At court in Manhattan, Al-Saadi’s defense lawyer, Andrew Dalack, claimed he is a “political prisoner” and a “prisoner of war”, and that the government was persecuting him for his relationship with Soleimani.
What do we know about the Iran-backed militia behind the plot?
The Shiite militia was founded in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2009 after a series of bombings, sniper and mortar attacks against military and diplomatic targets.
The group works “extensively” with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force (IRGC-QF), according to the U.S. government, as well as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah. It also operated in support of the Assad regime in Syria.
In the mid-2010’s, Kata’ib Hezbollah joined other Shiite groups in the loosely organized coalition called the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to fight against ISIS in Iraq. Though the PMF now exists under the supervision of Iraq’s national security forces, it fights with significant independence.
Knights believes this latest arrest may spur pressure on Iraq to take action against the group.
“There’s even more impetus to this idea that the Iraqis have to do something about groups like Kata’ib Hezbollah.”
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