In a major counterterrorism operation that spans three continents, United States federal authorities have taken an Iraqi militia commander accused of orchestrating nearly two dozen terror plots across North America and Europe into custody to face prosecution. The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a multi-count criminal complaint on Friday detailing the charges against 32-year-old Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a senior commander in Kataib Hezbollah — an Iraqi armed group branded a foreign terrorist organization by Washington with long-standing ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
According to court documents, al-Saadi was first apprehended by law enforcement in Turkey, before being extradited to FBI custody and transported to the United States. He made his initial appearance at Manhattan federal court, where a judge ordered him held without bail ahead of his upcoming trial. Prosecutors allege al-Saadi’s coordinated campaign of planned and executed attacks was launched explicitly in retaliation for the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the top IRGC commander, and to advance the violent ideological objectives of Kataib Hezbollah and the IRGC.
Court records outline that since March 9 of this year, al-Saadi has been linked to 18 separate attacks across European countries and two additional plots in Canada, all targeting U.S. and Israeli civilian and institutional interests. The string of documented incidents began with an explosive attack on a synagogue in Liège, Belgium, followed just four days later by an arson attack at a synagogue in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The next day, an explosive device was detonated at a Jewish school in Amsterdam, with a subsequent attack targeting the Bank of New York Mellon’s Amsterdam office just 24 hours later. The wave of attacks continued through March and April, spreading to major European cities including London, Antwerp, Paris and Munich. On April 29, an attacker stabbed two Jewish men in an attack in London that authorities tie to al-Saadi’s direction.
Beyond the attacks already carried out, prosecutors say al-Saadi actively plotted large-scale assaults inside the United States, specifically targeting Jewish community centers. He is accused of attempting to recruit an individual he believed to be a member of a Mexican drug cartel to carry out attacks on three high-profile locations: a prominent, undisclosed synagogue in New York City, a Jewish institution in Los Angeles, California, and a third facility in Scottsdale, Arizona. According to official accounts, al-Saadi provided the undercover would-be operative with site photos, detailed maps of all three targets, and asked for a cost estimate to bomb the locations and ignite coordinated fires across the three sites simultaneously. A phone call recording from April 1 captures al-Saadi explicitly asking about the cost of hiring someone to carry out a bombing operation targeting “a Jewish temple, a Jewish centre” in the U.S., prosecutors allege.
Al-Saadi faces six terrorism-related criminal counts, including conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to support transnational terrorist acts, and conspiracy to bomb a public facility. However, his defense attorney Andrew Dalack has pushed back against the charges, framing the case as a politically motivated prosecution. Dalack told U.S. broadcaster CBS News that al-Saadi is essentially a prisoner of war and should be classified as such rather than facing civilian criminal trial. The BBC has reached out to Dalack for additional comment on the case, but has not yet received a response.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche highlighted the arrest as a landmark success for American law enforcement, emphasizing the operation’s role in disrupting terrorist networks before they could carry out planned attacks inside U.S. borders. “As alleged in the complaint, Al-Saadi directed and urged others to attack U.S. and Israeli interests and to kill Americans and Jews in the U.S. and abroad, and in doing so advance the terrorist goals of Kata’ib Hizballah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Blanche said in an official statement following the unsealing of the complaint.