“Islamic State Planned Attack on George W. Bush in Texas” | Abroad

Two confidential informants and surveillance of the IS envoy’s Whatsapp account uncovered the alleged plot. The FBI filed a search warrant on March 23. This week, that document was made public in Ohio. The warrant, first reported by Forbes on Tuesday, was resealed. A spokesman for the Cincinnati prosecutor’s office declined to comment.

The suspected Shihab Ahmed Shihab, an Iraqi asylum seeker, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, has been staying in the US since 2020. He said he wanted to kill Bush because he believes the former president is responsible for the deaths of many Iraqis and for the disintegration of the country after the US military invasion in 2003, according to the search warrant.

One of the FBI informants offered to help Shihab acquire false immigration and identity documents. The other pretended to be a customer willing to pay thousands of dollars to smuggle his family into the US.

In November 2021, the suspect revealed to the secretive FBI informant that he wanted to kill George W. Bush and asked the source to help him acquire fake police or FBI identification and badges. Shihab also wanted to know whether it would be possible to smuggle the accomplices out of the country again via the same route. He also indicated that a former Iraqi general was on his death list. That man is said to have helped the Americans during the war and, according to him, now lives under a false identity in the US.

Shihab claimed that he was part of a unit called ‘Al-Raed’, meaning ‘Thunder’, and was led by a former Iraqi pilot of Saddam Hussein who was operating out of Qatar until he died some time ago. According to a conversation described in the search warrant, seven members of the unit were to be sent to the US to kill Bush. The suspect’s job was to “locate and spy on former President Bush’s residences and offices, and to acquire weapons and vehicles for use in the attack.”

Shihab also said he wanted to smuggle into the US four Iraqis who are in Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and Denmark. One of them was “the secretary of a finance minister of IS”, he claimed. The four men, he said, were supporters of Saddam Hussein’s political organization and were political exiles who did not agree with the current Iraqi regime. He planned to charge them $15,000 each to get them into the US, the FBI said.

According to the search warrant, Shihab wanted to obtain Mexican tourist visas for the foursome and use passport information that he would provide to the informant via Whatsapp.

The FBI was given access to the location data of Shihab’s mobile phone from the American telephone company AT&T and the agents also found out how often he used his Whatsapp account, which numbers he contacted and whether the account was active or not. They also got access to all the messages he exchanged with the two FBI informants. In addition, since October, the suspect had been using a telephone that he had received from the informant at the request of the FBI.

The informants also made audio recordings of their encounters with the suspect. According to the FBI, additional disturbing details came to light. For example, in December, Shihab claimed that he had just smuggled two militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement into the country for $50,000 per person (about $47,000). Both the US and the European Union regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

The FBI also reports in the document that Shihab claimed to be a member of “the resistance” and to have killed many Americans in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. He is said to have detonated car bombs near American soldiers.

It is not clear whether the suspect was actually arrested. As far as we know, the man has not yet been charged.

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