The alleged mastermind of the string of attacks on the Jewish community in London earlier this year has been accused of plotting further terror atrocities from his prison cell.
Iranian national Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al Saadi, 32, is being held at a federal centre in New York after being charged in May with six counts of terrorism offences.
He is suspected to be a senior figure in Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (The Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right), an alleged front for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which claimed responsibility for the majority of the major antisemitic attacks in London this year.
Those included the Hatzolah ambulance attack in Golders Green on March 23, the Kenton Synagogue arson attack on April 19 and the Golders Green stabbing on April 29.
According to documents reported by the Times, the FBI now accuses Al Saadi of using “coded language” in calls from prison and instructing people on the outside to “work”.
The federal law enforcement agency also alleges he has directed money transfers worth more than £750,000 and orchestrated propaganda videos to spread his “violent ideology and psychological warfare”.
The FBI also accuses Saadi of masterminding a plot to kill Jews at synagogues in America.
Currently being held in near-solitary confinement, Al Saadi is due to go to trial next summer over the six charges, plus an extra two over his alleged activities as an operative of the Iraqi militia group Kataib Hezbollah and the IRGC, both proscribed groups in the US.
Responding to the allegations about Al Saadi plotting from his cell, his defence team said that the accusations rely on "speculation, misinterpretation, and overreach."
In response to an FBI interception in which Al Saadi allegedly mentioned a gun and said, “give him money so we can do it,” his defence said the remark was a "banal" joke.
His lawyers argue that the government is violating his constitutional and Geneva Convention rights by placing him in extreme solitary confinement based on "draconian restrictions" that do not withstand scrutiny.
His lawyers claim that Al Saadi should be treated as a prisoner of war rather than a criminal detainee.
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