Shihab Ahmed Shihab, 52, told an FBI informant that he wanted to bring at least four other Iraqis into the country through the Mexican border to carry out the plot, according to an FBI affidavit filed in court. Federal of Columbus, Ohio.
Two of the strike team members would be former Iraqi intelligence officers, while the others would be members of the Islamic State (IS) group or another Qatar-based hardline group that Shihab called “al-Raed.”
Shihab told the informant that they wanted to kill Bush, who ordered the 2003 invasion of Iraq, “because they believed he was responsible for the murder of many Iraqis and the breakdown of the entire country of Iraq,” according to the dossier.
He told the informant that he was the cousin of former IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and had killed Americans in the years after the invasion.
Shihab was taken into custody early Tuesday and was charged in federal court with an immigration felony and complicity in the attempted murder of a former US official.
A Columbus resident, Shihab and the informant came to stake out Bush-related locations in Dallas, Texas, and discussed how to obtain weapons, security officer uniforms and vehicles to use in the plot.
He also offered to help a second FBI informant smuggle members of his family into the United States for tens of thousands of dollars.
Shihab came to the United States on a visitor visa in September 2020 and applied for asylum in March 2021 when his visa expired.
The entrance Iraqi man arrested for plotting assassination of former President Bush was first published in diary TODAY.
