Engineer pleads not responsible in US case over lethal Iran-linked drone strike

By Nate Raymond (NS:RYMD)

BOSTON (Reuters) – A former engineer at a semiconductor producer pleaded not responsible on Friday to U.S. costs that he illegally procured know-how for an Iranian agency that made a key element of a drone utilized in a January assault by Iran-backed militants in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members.

Mahdi Sadeghi, who was fired by Analog Units (NASDAQ:ADI) after his Dec. 16 arrest, pleaded not responsible throughout a listening to in federal court docket in Boston to costs that he engaged in a scheme to violate U.S. export management and sanctions legal guidelines.

He entered the plea practically two weeks after the U.S. Division of Justice introduced costs in opposition to the twin U.S.-Iranian citizen and the pinnacle of an Iranian navigation techniques producer, Mohammad Abedini, who was arrested in Italy.

Prosecutors mentioned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was the first buyer of Abedini’s firm, San’at Danesh Rahpooyan Aflak Co, which made the navigation system utilized in its army drone program.

Prosecutors say that system was utilized in an unmanned drone that struck a U.S. outpost in Jordan known as Tower 22, close to the Syrian border, in an assault that killed three Military Reserve troopers from Georgia and injured 47 others. 

The White Home has mentioned the assault was facilitated by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline Iran-backed militant teams. 

Iran has denied involvement within the assault, and its international ministry was quoted in Iranian media on Saturday saying the arrests of Sadeghi and Abedini, an Iranian citizen, violated worldwide legislation.

Prosecutors mentioned that in 2016, Sadeghi, a resident of Natick, Massachusetts, traveled to Iran to hunt funding from a governmental group for a health wearables firm that he had co-founded.

By way of an affiliated Iranian firm he established, Sadeghi started serving to procure U.S.-origin digital elements on behalf of Abedini, who’s also referred to as Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, prosecutors mentioned.

After taking a job at Massachusetts-based Analog Units in 2019, Sadeghi helped a Switzerland entrance firm for Abedini’s Iranian agency enter right into a contract with Analog Units, and assisted Abedini in procuring U.S. know-how, prosecutors mentioned.

The digital elements Abedini obtained included the identical sort used within the navigation system discovered within the drone, prosecutors mentioned.

Sadeghi has been detained since his arrest. U.S. Justice of the Peace Choose Donald Cabell set a Jan. 2 listening to to probably grant his launch after a protection lawyer reported progress in talks with prosecutors on acceptable bail situations.