Overview
- Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al‑Saadi, who was arrested in Turkey on Friday, May 15, has been extradited to the United States and charged by the Department of Justice in connection with 18 attacks or attempted attacks across Europe and the U.S.
- The DOJ says prosecutors allege he planned, coordinated or claimed responsibility for attacks that targeted Jewish communities and Western sites, including an explosion at a synagogue in Liège and an arson at a temple in Rotterdam.
- News outlets report that Al‑Saadi posted a map of the Florida neighborhood where Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner own a home and that sources told the New York Post he vowed to kill Ivanka, but that specific assassination claims have not been presented as separate charges in the federal indictment.
- Reporting portrays him as linked to Iran’s IRGC and Shiite militias, trained in Tehran, and using a pilgrimage travel agency, an Iraqi service passport and social media to move and communicate; he is being held in isolation at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
- The case draws on the 2020 killing of Qasem Soleimani as an alleged motive and could prompt wider probes of transnational militant networks, travel-document channels and online threats to private residences and Jewish institutions.