US federal prosecutors announced new charges against a leader in the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, who they said helped manage a plan to target Fairford Air Force Base in southern England, despite being inside a prison in Brooklyn, New York.
According to the indictment, Muhammad Baqir Saad Daoud al-Saadi used his phone calls to his mother and sister to pass encrypted messages related to the operation, and asked them to relay instructions to other people working for Iran, according to the New York Times.
Al-Saadi is being held in the Federal Detention Center in Brooklyn, after he was arrested by the Turkish authorities, before being extradited to the United States, where he was charged last May with planning to target Jewish sites inside American territory.
Prosecutors said at the time that he was planning to carry out at least 20 attacks against American and Israeli targets, as part of a revenge campaign that followed the outbreak of the American-Israeli war on Iran.
Despite the tight security restrictions imposed on him inside the prison, the prosecution says that he was able to continue communicating with his accomplices. During calls with his mother and sister last summer, he conveyed to them instructions regarding the plan to target the British base.
The indictment indicates that Al-Saadi used indirect phrases during one of the calls, as he asked his sister: “What are they doing about all our old work?” A phrase that prosecutors said carried a coded meaning related to the operation.
The new indictment included two other people, the Iranian Mohsen Muhajiri and the Iraqi Muhammad Ali Al-Hassani. The US Attorney in Manhattan, Jamie McDonald, said that the defendants helped organize a terrorist campaign on behalf of groups linked to Iran.
The accusations target the Fairford Air Base of the British Royal Air Force, which is also used by American forces, and is located in the county of Gloucestershire, southwest of England.
British authorities began investigating the incident in late September, after a suspect called emergency services from one of three white trucks seen moving near the base late at night. The report raised fears of a plan to target the military facility.
This was followed by a widespread security alert, which included the arrest of five men on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, the evacuation of 85 homes, and the sending of a robot specialized in dealing with explosives to inspect trucks. The British authorities also held emergency meetings to discuss the developments.
American and British security assessments linked the plan to Iran, or to a military entity linked to Tehran, amid fears that it is part of a broader threat targeting American military bases in Europe, including the Spangdahlem and Ramstein bases in Germany.
In a later development, British prosecutors said that a man suspected of working for Iran organized the operation, by providing funding and assigning people to monitor the base and purchase trucks and supplies, as well as searching for drivers to carry out the mission.
According to US charges, Al-Hassani, who was in Iran at the time of the events, was in contact with truck drivers and paid one person to monitor the base’s perimeter in August, before directing the group to transport trucks loaded with fuel to the site on September 26.
But British searches did not reveal explosives inside the trucks, and the five men who were arrested were released on bail the next day.
On the other hand, Andrew Dallack, Al-Saadi’s lawyer, refused to comment on the new accusations, but he questioned the evidence relied upon by the authorities, saying in a judicial memorandum that what the government presented does not go beyond speculation about conversations translated from Arabic, and does not justify the continued detention of his client under strict security conditions.
On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected the BBC’s request to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed against it by US President Donald Trump, demanding billions of dollars in compensation.
Trump accused the BBC of misleadingly editing a clip from a documentary to make it appear as if he was inciting violence when he asked his supporters to march to the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
He sought damages of at least $5 billion for both the defamation suit and another independent lawsuit, under Florida's consumer protection law.
Federal District Court Judge Jeffrey T. Koontz asked the BBC to dismiss the defamation lawsuit, but he dropped the lawsuit filed under the Florida Consumer Protection Law.
“The question of whether President Trump is able to prove these allegations and assert that he suffered damages at summary judgment or at trial is a matter for determination at a later date,” Koontz wrote in a 40-page ruling.
The BBC documentary combined two separate clips from Trump's speech on January 6, 2021, to make it appear as if he explicitly urged his supporters to storm the Capitol building.
Despite its apology for the “documentary” that prompted a number of its senior executives to resign, the BBC believes that it did not cause any real harm to Trump.
Koontz’s ruling stated: “Given the time difference between the two clips (of Trump’s speech), this time distance in itself gives rise to a logical hypothesis that (the BBC) knew, or should have known, that the clip it prepared was not and will not be truthful.”
He added: “This was not just a simple change in the details, but rather it was the production of something completely different from what was said in the speech.”
For his part, Trump, in a post on Truth Social, praised Koontz’s ruling, which he considered a “tremendous victory.”
He added: “We will continue to fight against all those who try to deceive the American people, and we will defeat them.”
Last month, an American judge set December 11 as the deadline for Trump to testify under oath in the lawsuit. In response to complaints submitted by the British network stating that the US President had evaded appearing to testify.
In its decision, the court stated that if Trump does not attend the session designated to give his statement, he risks being subjected to penalties that may include dismissal of his lawsuit.
US lawmakers called on Tuesday for more criminal investigations into the associates of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in a scathing report that held prosecutors, financial institutions and influential people responsible for allowing his abuses to continue for years.
The Epstein case haunted President Donald Trump, who had a friendship with the late financier for years, despite his denial of any knowledge of the crimes he committed. The accusations against Trump of covering up a large part of the investigations led to the outbreak of the first fundamental disagreement with his support base since his return to the White House.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee urged the Justice Department to question or re-question key witnesses and pursue allegations against two prominent men who had ties to Epstein.
Both Philip Levin, the former mayor of Miami Beach, and Frederic Fekkai, the famous French hairdresser, deny the sexual assault allegations made by Epstein's longtime assistant, Sarah Killeen, which the commission referred to federal prosecutors in June.
The report also called for another longtime aide to Epstein, Leslie Grove, to be subjected to further questioning about what she may have known about his crimes.
Grove asserted that she never suspected Epstein of sexual assault against women and girls, testimony that Republican investigators described as lacking credibility.
The report concluded that Epstein's crimes committed after 2005 could have been prevented if federal investigators and prosecutors had treated the initial allegations against him more seriously.
Instead, Florida prosecutors in 2007 reached a controversial deal that allowed him to escape federal charges in exchange for him pleading guilty to less serious state crimes.
Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but he only served 13 months, as he received broad privileges to get out of prison for the purpose of working, during which period he continued to abuse women, according to the report.
The investigation also accused financial institutions of ignoring suspicious transactions and warning signs of human trafficking, and singled out American Express.
Lawmakers called on the Treasury Department to check whether some banks are adequately reporting suspicious activity linked to illicit trafficking and money laundering.
The report also criticized the Department of Justice for disclosing survivors' private information while publishing the Epstein files.
Republican investigators said they found no evidence implicating Trump in Epstein's crimes, and accused Democrats of politicizing the investigation.
But Robert Garcia, the most prominent Democratic member of the committee, rejected these findings, describing them as the outcome of an incomplete investigation that did not include any public hearings. He also accused the Justice Department of illegally withholding “more than 2.5 million pages of documents.”
Democrats, who seized control of Congress in last week's midterm elections, pledged to continue investigating Epstein's network when they assume their new powers in January.
