September 06-13
Nigeria has charged two of its nationals with working as spies for Iran by casing Israeli sites for possible terror attacks.
Three Nigerians were arrested in February during a Nigerian police raid to break up a group suspected of working for “Iranian handlers” who wanted information on sites frequented by Israelis living in Nigeria.
The Islamic Republic has previously been implicated in the last two years in plots against Israelis in Thailand, India and Georgia. Members of the Lebanese Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran, have been implicated in plots in Bulgaria and Cyprus.
Last Wednesday, a Nigerian federal court charged two of the Nigerian men and set a September 17 trial date after both pleaded not guilty to six counts.
The court accused Abdullahi Mustapha Berenda of traveling to Iran between September 2011 and December 2012 for “terrorist training” in the use of firearms and explosives, the most serious of the counts. Court records said he received $30,000 to fund the group’s operations.
Two sites were identified in the court records as targets of their surveillance, the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Center and the Lagos Branch of AA Consulting.
Berenda and the other man charged, Saheed Oluremi Adewumi, were said to have used cameras to surveill the sites.
In 2010, authorities at the port of Lagos found a shipping container there was packed with weapons, ammunition and rockets from Iran. The destination is not entirely clear, but appeared likely to be Gambia in West Africa. An Iranian and a Nigerian have each been sentenced to five years for arms smuggling in that case.