Iraqi national in Ohio plotted to assassinate former President George W. Bush in Texas
An Iraqi man living in Ohio accused of being an Islamic State operative plotted to smuggle assassins into the country to kill former President George W. Bush, according the U.S. Department of Justice.
Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, a 51-year-old Iraqi national living in Columbus, has been charged with an immigration crime and aiding and abetting a plot to kill Bush, according court documents from the Department of Justice Southern District of Ohio. Shihab told an FBI confidential informant he actively participated in killing American soldiers in Iraq, the department said.
But when Shihab thought he was talking to people sympathetic with his cause, the FBI said in court documents, he was actually speaking to two confidential informants, referred to in court documents as CS1 and CS2.
CS1 posed as someone connected to a large smuggling network who could sneak people into the United States from overseas via the U.S.-Mexico border, according to court documents. CS2 contacted Shihab trhough a relative who drives for Uber and told Shihab that he or she wanted to smuggle a relative into the United States, later telling Shihab the relative was a wanted man in Iraq involved with the Islamic State.
Shihab is accused of traveling to Dallas in February to scout locations associated with Bush in preparation for the would-be assassination attempt. He with others in a hotel room in Columbus to look at sample firearms and law enforcement uniforms in March, according to the Justice Department.
According to an FBI affidavit obtained by the Star-Telegram, Shihab said he wanted to assassinate Bush because he held the former president responsible for deaths in Iraq and the breaking up of the country after the U.S. military invasion in 2003.
According to Forbes, the FBI said the plot was uncovered through surveillance of Shihab’s WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging app owned by Facebook parent organization Meta, and the work of two confidential informants.
Forbes said the case shows that federal investigators have continued to monitor actions by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, “even as the group has been severely weakened by American intelligence and military operations in recent years.”
Shihab entered the U.S. in September 2020 on a visitor visa and filed a claim for asylum with U.S. citizenship in March 2021, according to the Justice Department. He has lived in Columbus and Indianapolis, where he worked at markets and restaurants.
Shihab is also accused of arranging to smuggle someone he thought to be an Iraqi national into the United States for a fee of $40,000, according to the Justice Department. He accepted tens of thousands of dollars in October and December of 2021 as payment for the smuggling.
Shihab could spend up to 10 years in prison if he is found guilty of attempting to illegally bring an individual into the United States, a federal crime. Also a federal crime, aiding and abetting the attempted murder of a former United States official has a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, if convicted, according to the Justice Department.
‘Aided the resistance’
Shihab told one of the confidential informants for the FBI, identified in court documents as CS1, that he’d “aided the resistance, with killing many Americans in Iraq between 2003 and 2006.” FBI Special Agent John Ypsilatis said in the affidavit in support of the charges said he believed the “resistance” to which Shihab referred was Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.
Shihab told CS1 that he transported vehicles and weapons from Syria to Iraq to supply “the resistance” and that the vehicles were “routinely packed with explosives and placed on both sides of various roads throughout Iraq,” according to the affidavit. When Americans would travel those roads, Shihab said the vehicles would be detonated to kill American soldiers.
When talking with CS1 about his plans to smuggle in assassins to target Bush, he said he wanted to do it because he felt Bush was responsible for killing many Iraqis during what Ypsilatis said he believed to be “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 2:41 PM.