An indictment unsealed on Tuesday offers fresh insight into an episode shrouded in mystery since September 27, when a group of men were detained on suspected explosives and terrorism offences after three suspicious vans were spotted travelling toward the air base where US bombers were stationed.
The new charges accuse Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national jailed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, of a role in plotting to attack the Royal Air Force Base in Fairford, in western England, even though he'd been arrested last northern spring.
According to prosecutors, al-Saadi used coded language in phone and video calls to his mother and sister in Iraq to pass messages encouraging associates to carry out the air base bombing.
Two other men have been charged in the case, which accuses Iran-backed operatives of plotting nearly 20 terror strikes on Jewish communities in Europe and the US
Neither of those men, Mohsen Mohajeri, an Iranian national, and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national, are in US custody.
"These defendants helped orchestrate a campaign of terror on behalf of terrorist organisations affiliated with Iran that targeted Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, and the British military base, RAF Fairford, housing American service members," said Manhattan US Attorney Jamie McDonald.
"The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical - it is very real."
Six men initially arrested in the United Kingdom in connection with the incident at the RAF base in Fairford were all released on bail, but two were later re-arrested on suspicion of assisting Iran's intelligence service and were charged under the National Security Act, British authorities said.
British authorities linked the incident to Tehran, and though Iran denied involvement, the arrests prompted the US to withdraw its bombers that had been stationed there. The bombers were redeployed to the United States.
RAF Fairford, about 160km west of London, has been used by American bombers during decades of conflicts in the Middle East.
US prosecutors said in the indictment that while speaking to his family from the Brooklyn jail, al-Saadi told them he owed money to Mohajeri and directed them to pass messages to him about "work", a term al-Saadi used to describe terrorist activity.
Since his May arrest, al-Saadi had been held in solitary confinement.
The indictment alleged the three men conspired to use a network of contacts in the UK to commit terror attacks on behalf of an Iran-aligned terrorist network, which included the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Kata'ib Hizballah.
In one instance in mid-April, the indictment said, al-Saadi, al-Hassani and Mohajeri directed an individual to carry out an arson attack on a Jewish charity organisation in London in real time as they watched it on video that was projected from a laptop computer onto a large screen. The next day, they directed another attack on a synagogue in London, with al-Hassani directing the individual to "light it up like a Christmas tree", the indictment said.
In June, al-Saadi pleaded not guilty to charges that he plotted at least 18 attacks in Europe in retaliation for the US and Israel's war with Iran. He called himself a "prisoner of war." He has been held without bail since.
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