Federal authorities on Monday announced criminal charges against two men, including a Natick resident, in connection with a January drone attack on a US military base in Jordan that killed three American service members and wounded more than 40 others.
Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, 42, of Natick, who holds dual citizenship in the United States and Iran, appeared in US District Court in Boston on Monday afternoon to face charges that he conspired to illegally export sensitive technology to Iran that was used to develop the weaponry used in the fatal attack. He was ordered held pending a detention hearing Dec. 27. He did not enter a plea Monday.
Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, also known as Abedini, 38, of Tehran, is charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, as well as conspiring with Sadeghi to illegally export sensitive technology from a Massachusetts company. He was arrested in Italy at the request of the US government, which will seek his extradition to Boston to face charges, authorities said.
Here’s a quick primer on the case pending against the pair, with details culled from a Monday briefing as well as a 36-page FBI affidavit filed in court.
The attack, and the US servicemembers killed
The drone attacked housing units at Tower 22, a small US outpost in Jordan near the border with Syria, during the early-morning hours of Jan. 28, according to the US Central Command.
Three Army Reserve soldiers killed in the attack were later identified as Staff Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Ga.; Sergeant Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga.; and Sergeant Breonna Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga. They were among some 350 troops stationed at the base to support a coalition mission aimed at defeating ISIS.
The alleged plot to ship Mass. technology overseas to aid in the attack
Sadeghi and Abedini are accused of conspiring to illegally export sensitive technology from a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Norwood to Iran using a front company in Switzerland owned by Abedini.
Sadeghi’s Linkedin page says he has worked at Analog Devices Inc.(ADI) for the past four years and is a technology group product marketing manager. A spokesperson for ADI, based in Norwood, said the company’s cooperating with the probe.
Sadeghi’s background
The affidavit describes Sadeghi as a native of Iran and naturalized US citizen.
He received electrical engineering degrees from the University of Tehran before obtaining a doctorate in the field from the University of Michigan, according to the affidavit and Sadeghi’s LinkedIn page.
In 2015, the affidavit says, he and two other people formed a separate Massachusetts company, identified in legal filings as Company 2, that “holds itself out” as a purveyor of fitness wearables, specializing in wearable sensors that provide “kinetic monitoring.”
The affidavit says Sadeghi and his business partners, identified in court papers only as Person 1 and Person 2, in August of that year issued a funding pitch to the Iranian National Elites Foundation, which works to “support Iran’s elite national talents.”
In exchange for foundation funding, the filing says, Sadeghi proposed to create a sister company in Iran.
Sadeghi and Person 2 traveled to Iran in August 2016 to meet with foundation officials and sought a $790,000 loan from Iran, in return for providing the country with “intellectual property, knowledge transfer, and capability development,” the affidavit says.
Investigators believe Sadeghi and his two partners knew their plans to set up companies funded by the Iranian government violated US law. The authorities cited email correspondence among them to substantiate the claim, including one email thread from December 2015.
“In that email, Person 2 referred to Person 1 as the ‘CEO, President and owner of [Iranian Company 1]’ and asked to have weekends off,” the affidavit says. “Person 1 responded, ‘[Y]ou can have all the weekends off you want if you promise to bring me some chai when I’m in jail.’”
There was more correspondence the following summer.
“Similarly, on August 1, 2016, Sadeghi asked Person 1 for input on the name of U.S. Company 2’s sister company in Iran, stating, ‘After all, it is all yours!,’” the filing says. “Person 1 responded, ‘I guess I should know what name it is when I am in court getting sentenced.’”
Abedini’s initial inquiries to ADI
Abedini had first approached ADI, identified in court papers as Company 1, in 2014, five years before Sadeghi started working there, legal filings show.
“While a student at Sharif University in Tehran, and after Abedini had founded [navigational system company] SDRA, Abedini sought parts from U.S. Company 1, stating that he needed some of the sensors for his Ph.D thesis in robotics and mechatronics,” the affidavit says. “U.S. Company 1 advised Abedini that it could not provide him with the requested sensors due to U.S. export control and sanctions laws involving Iran.”
But he had better luck in 2016 in Switzerland, where he was doing postgraduate work.
In January of that year, the affidavit says, Abedini “was able to procure parts from U.S. Company 1 to his university address in Switzerland. An invoice from U.S. Company 1 reflects that the products were shipped to Switzerland and that the recipient was ‘SDRA, Mohammad Abedini.’”
Over the next two years, the affidavit says, “ABEDINI used U.S.-based electronics distributors to order electronic components from multiple U.S.-based manufacturers, including U.S. Company 1, for delivery in Switzerland, often to ABEDINI’s university address.”
Sadeghi and Abedini allegedly begin plotting together
In January 2018, the filing says, “Sadeghi emailed Abedini with the contact information for a U.S. Company 1 distributor in Hong Kong,” and authorities believe Sadeghi was “advising Abedini how he could evade U.S. export control laws and sanctions by ordering U.S. Company 1 parts through a non-U.S. distributor that would ship U.S. Company 1 parts to Abedini in Iran.”
In mid-2019, Abedini launched a company called Illumove in Switzerland to “facilitate SDRA’s” continued provision of materials to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the affidavit says.
In addition, the filing says, Sadeghi was hired by ADI, aka US Company 1, in March 2019.
“Soon after Sadeghi was hired by U.S. Company 1, Sadeghi began taking steps to introduce Abedini—who, by this time ... had started the process to establish a Swiss front company for SDRA—to U.S. Company 1 Employee,” the affidavit says.
In August 2019, court papers say, Sadeghi introduced Abedini via email to an ADI official.
“Sadeghi’s email to U.S. Company 1 Employee stated, in part: ‘Here is the contact person of the company I was talking about: Mohammad Abedini m.abedini[at]illumove.com,’” the affidavit said. “‘They have recently started a company in Lausanne, Switzerland. Mohammad is their CTO and has a 50% appointment with [the Swiss university]. I have worked with him and the team closely at [U.S. Company 2] and based on my experience they are very competent in HW [hardware], FW [firmware], and SW [software] development.”
The filing says that after Sadeghi introduced Abedini to ADI, the ADI representative “emailed Abedini about a potential collaboration between Illumove and U.S. Company 1 for Illumove to develop the hardware and software for an evaluation tool that could be used for a wide range of U.S. Company 1 inertial sensors.”
Material from prior Globe stories was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com.