The US Justice Department on Friday announced the arrest of a senior Iraqi militia commander for terrorism against Jewish targets on behalf of Iran since the outbreak of the recent war with the United States and Israel.

Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a member of the Kataeb Hezbollah terrorist group and an operative of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, plotted close to 20 attacks in the US, Europe and Canada, prosecutors said.

According to the complaint, Al-Saadi and unnamed associates planned, coordinated, and claimed responsibility for the attacks in the name of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, a component of Kataeb Hezbollah, since late February.

Al-Saadi, 32, was extradited to the US from abroad and appeared in a federal court in New York City, where he smiled throughout his initial appearance but did not speak.

He allegedly planned attacks on “US and Israeli interests and to kill Americans and Jews in the US and abroad,” said Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Attacks linked to al-Saadi include arson against a synagogue in North Macedonia, the stabbing of two Jewish men last month in London, the bombing of a Bank of New York Mellon building in Amsterdam in mid-March and a thwarted bomb attack on a Bank of America office in Paris on March 28, the complaint said. Teenage suspects were previously arrested in both cases.

The Amsterdam attack caused a fire and significant damage to the building, but no injuries, according to local media reports. It followed an explosion outside a Jewish school in Amsterdam, which Al-Saadi celebrated on Snapchat with an Ashab al-Yamin-branded video showing the blast and the assailants fleeing on a motorcycle, the criminal........

© The Times of Israel