A suspected terrorist pal of Iran’s late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sported a brazen smirk in Manhattan court Monday — screaming all’s fair in war — as he pleaded not guilty to plotting to bomb a city synagogue.
“I’m not a criminal! … Our children are being killed by your rockets!” Mohammad Baqer Saad Dadwood al-Saadi, 32, shouted during the unhinged outburst.
“I’m not guilty! … I’m in a war situation!” said the suspect, who allegedly planned to bomb the Big Apple house of worship as part of a global reign of terror that spanned nearly a decade, federal prosecutors said.
Al-Saadi, a reputed leader of the terror group Kata’ib Hizballah with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, coordinated the bombing of a Bank of New York in Amsterdam, a synagogue in Belgium and the stabbing of two Jewish victims in London, authorities have said.
In all, federal prosecutors said al-Saadi has been linked to 16 planned or executed attacks of international targets in March and April alone.
“Al-Saadi claims to be part of the ‘resistance,’ a group that includes IRGC, an Iran-based designated foreign terror organization,” US Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement.
“All Americans should recognize that we have sworn enemies and when your enemies tell you something and when they act, you should know that they mean it,” Clayton said.
The feds have not identified the “prominent” synagogue that was targeted but said al-Saadi allegedly paid a person who turned out to be an undercover agent $10,000 to carry out the attack.
He was nabbed in Turkey earlier this month and hauled to Manhattan federal court Monday, where he entered his plea on indictment charges of conspiring to provide material support for terrorist groups, conspiracy to bomb a place of public use and other counts.
Al-Saadi, who is believed to have ties to Hezbollah, is being held in solitary confinement at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.