DALLAS — An alleged ISIS operative based in Ohio was charged on Tuesday with plotting to murder former President George W. Bush and attempting to bring assassins into the country illegally, across the U.S.-Mexico border.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio issued a criminal compliant against Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, an alleged ISIS operative from Iraq who plotted to assassinate Bush, and had traveled to Dallas in February to survey his home, according to recently unsealed court documents.
Shihab, who claims to have killed many Americans in Iraq, said he wanted to assassinate Bush because he felt the former president was responsible for killing Iraqis and destabilizing the country after the U.S. invasion in 2003, according to an unsealed FBI search-warrant application. He planned to smuggle assassins across the Mexican border to Dallas to kill the former president.
The news comes days after Bush, who was president from 2001 to 2009, made headlines for a verbal faux pas when he said the invasion of Iraq was “wholly unjustified and brutal,” when he meant the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Republican leaders reacted with particular concern about smuggling assassins across the U.S.-Mexico border, although the FBI agent’s arrest affidavit does not confirm Shihab ever succeeded in getting anyone into the U.S.
Shihab was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, by FBI agents Tuesday and appeared in federal court. He had entered the U.S. in September 2020 on a visitor visa, and in March 2021, he requested asylum with U.S. citizenship, according to the Department of Justice. The asylum claim is pending review.
Shihab said he was planning to charge four Iraqi men located in Iraq, Turkey, Egypt and Denmark $15,000 each to be smuggled into the U.S. He described them as “former Baath Party members in Iraq who did not agree with the current Iraqi government and were political exiles,” the FBI said. But on one attempt to smuggle an Iraqi into the U.S. illegally through Mexico, the person was fictitious, and Shihab was communicating with the FBI.
Shihab told a confidential informant who pretended to seek his help bringing a relative to the U.S. that he had recently smuggled two people associated with the terrorist organization Hezbollah into the U.S. The FBI agent noted, however, that Shihab did not reveal their identities during the recorded conversation and the document doesn’t state whether Shihab’s claim was corroborated.
Shihab claimed to be a part of a unit called “Al-Raed,” a group led by a former Iraqi pilot for Saddam Hussein. He said as many as seven group members would be sent to kill Bush, according to the warrant. Shihab was tasked with surveillance on the former president and traveled to Dallas to video his home and offices, including the George W. Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University.
The 21-page affidavit for Shihab’s arrest details recorded conversations he had with two confidential informants about plans for the assassination, as well as plans to smuggle people into the U.S. who were not related to the plot.
In January, Shihab asked a confidential informant to retrieve fake law enforcement badges to help them carry out the plot. Shihab also asked for information to arrange for some of those involved in the attack to be smuggled to Mexico after the assassination.
Two of the people, however, are former Iraqi intelligence agents who did not care if they died in the mission or did not make it out of the U.S., Shihab told the informant, according to the affidavit.
Shihab said he wanted to be involved in the murder and did not care if he died “as he would be proud to have been involved in killing former president Bush,” the document states.
But the roles delegated to him by plot leaders in Quatar did not include being present for the attack. Shihab was tasked with arranging travel logistics, obtaining and providing vehicles and weapons and surveying Bush’s homes and offices.
Shihab flew to Dallas in early February to see Bush’s house and the George W. Bush Institute. The informant drove Shihab to Bush’s gated neighborhood, where Shihab recorded videos on his cellphone of the front access gate and the surrounding area. He also recorded the library and an office in the institute.
Attempting to bring someone into the U.S. illegally is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Attempting to assassinate a former president is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
“President Bush has all the confidence in the world in the United States Secret Service and our law enforcement and intelligence communities,” said Bush’s chief of staff Freddy Ford.
Last week during a 10-minute speech at an event on democracy at his presidential center, Bush made a verbal faux pas while referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Bush noted has brutally stifled popular dissent and had political opponents imprisoned.
“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” Bush said, before wincing and correcting himself. “I mean, of Ukraine.”
The comment left the audience in an awkward silence. Then, Bush shrugged and said under his breath: “Iraq, too.”
Texas Republicans in Congress were quick to collectively hone in on one key takeaway from the report: the man accused of plotting to kill the former president planned to smuggle his co-conspirators over the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Stunning,” Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted. “This bombshell report puts it in the absolute starkest terms the necessity to secure the border NOW. #BidenBorderCrisis”
Sen. John Cornyn tweeted a link to a Forbes article, breaking the story, pulling out one quote in particular: “recruiting help from a team of compatriots he hoped to smuggle into the country over the Mexican border.”
Cornyn retweeted San Angelo Rep. August Pfluger:”Forbes is reporting an ISIS plotter planned to assassinate George W. Bush with Iraqi compatriots smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border. The threat of terrorism due to our porous southern border grows every day. We must secure our border.”
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(Dallas Morning News staff writer Emily Caldwell contributed to this report.)
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