US charges 2 men over deadly drone strike on troops in Jordan

US prosecutors charged two men on Monday with illegally exporting sensitive technology to Iran that was used in a drone attack by Iran-backed militias in January that killed three US soldiers and injured 47 others in Jordan, Reuters has reported.

Federal prosecutors in Boston charged Mohammad Abedini, the co-founder of an Iranian-based company, and Mahdi Sadeghi, an employee of Massachusetts-based semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices, with conspiring to violate US export laws.

Prosecutors also charged Abedini, also known as Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, with providing material support to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that resulted in death. The US designates the Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organisation.

Abedini, a resident of both Switzerland and Iran, was arrested in Milan, Italy, at the request of the US government, which will seek his extradition. Sadeghi, an Iranian-born naturalised US citizen living in Natick, Massachusetts, was also arrested.

“We often cite hypothetical risk when we talk about the dangers of American technologies getting into dangerous hands,” said US Attorney Joshua Levy in Massachusetts. “Unfortunately, in this situation, we are not speculating.”

The 28 January drone attack on a US outpost in Jordan called Tower 22 near the Syrian border, was the first deadly strike against US forces since Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza erupted in October last year. US arms have continued to be supplied to Israel in defiance of federal law which prohibits such transfers if there is a possibility that the arms will be used to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The three US Army Reserve soldiers killed were all from Georgia. They were named as Sergeant William Jerome Rivers; Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders; and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett.

The White House said that the attack was facilitated by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella organisation of Iran-backed militias. Iran has denied involvement in the attack.

At a press conference in Boston, Levy said that the FBI had been able to trace sophisticated navigation equipment used in the drone to Abedini’s Iranian company, SDRA, which manufactured the navigation system. He added that Abedini had used a company in Switzerland as a front to procure American technologies from Sadeghi’s employer, including accelerometers and gyroscopes that were then sent to Iran.

During a brief court hearing, Sadeghi was ordered detained pending a further hearing after a prosecutor called him a flight risk. His court-appointed lawyer did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. A lawyer for Abedini could not be identified.

Court papers do not identify Sadeghi’s employer by name, but Analog Devices confirmed that he worked for the company. It said that it was cooperating with law enforcement and was “committed to preventing unauthorised access to and misuse of our products and technology.”

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