An Iraqi citizen seeking asylum in the United States is suspected of organizing an ISIS plot to assassinate former President George W. Bush in retaliation for the invasion of Iraq, the Forbes website revealed, relying on FBI documents.
Details of the alleged plot were released in a request for a search warrant filed by the Bureau of Investigation two months ago and revealed just this week by the prosecution in Ohio’s Southern District. At the center of the investigation was an Iraqi citizen who arrived in the United States two years ago and is awaiting a decision on his application for asylum, but Forbes noted that no indictment has yet been filed against him and it is unclear if he was arrested.
During the investigation, two detectives from the FBI were used – one of them claimed to the suspect that he could assist in providing immigration documents and forged identification and the other source claimed that he was a client of smuggling people into the country. In addition, FBI agents were given permission to track the suspect’s WhatsApp account, including his use, the numbers he was in contact with and the text messages he wrote and received.
According to the order, the suspect claimed to be part of a unit called “Thunder”, which was led by a former pilot of dictator Saddam Hussein and its members who belonged to the Ba’athist regime and became active in ISIS. He even claimed that he participated in the killing of American soldiers with infernal cars. According to the suspect, he wanted to assassinate the former president because he saw him as responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and the disintegration of the country due to the 2003 invasion that overthrew the Saddam regime.
In November 2021, the suspect revealed to one of the informants the plot and asked him to assist in obtaining “fake identification marks and badges of police and FBI” and asked him about the possibility of smuggling the assassins into and out of the country after the planned assassination. He claimed that seven members of the unit were due to arrive in the United States, including “the secretary of the ISIS Minister of Economy.”
The suspect himself was supposed to “locate and track the former president’s dormitories and his offices and obtain weapons and vehicles for the assassination.” He also traveled with one of the informants to Dallas to photograph the Bush home and the George W. Bush Institute. The order also states that last December, the informants recorded the suspect while claiming that he managed to smuggle two Hezbollah operatives into the US for a payment of $ 50,000 each.