The US charged three individuals with a plot to assassinate an Iranian-American journalist living in New York for expressing views about Iran’s human rights abuses.
(Bloomberg) — The US charged three individuals with a plot to assassinate an Iranian-American journalist living in New York for expressing views about Iran’s human rights abuses.
“The victim in this case was targeted for exercising the rights to which every American citizen is entitled,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference in Washington Friday. “We will not tolerate attempts by a foreign power to threaten, silence or harm Americans.”
Charges related to “murder-for-hire” and money-laundering were unsealed on Friday in Manhattan federal court against Rafat Amirov, 43, of Iran; Polad Omarov, 38, of the Czech Republic and Slovenia, and Khalif Mehdiyev, 24, of Yonkers, New York. The case is pending before US District Judge Colleen McMahon.
The Justice Department said the three were alleged members of an Eastern European crime organization with ties to Iran who were recruited to kill the journalist as part of an effort by that nation’s leaders to silence critics living overseas. Matt Olsen, the Justice Department’s national security division chief, said the victim, who wasn’t named in the indictment, was the same person targeted by a kidnapping plot last year.
Masih Alinejad, a journalist, author and activist, was targeted in 2021 in a scheme to force her to return to Iran, prosecutors said at the time. Alinejad, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, wasn’t named in court papers, but she identified herself in a Twitter post later.
“As alleged, the defendants are members of an organized crime group hired to assassinate, right here in New York City, a US citizen of Iranian origin who has been critical of the regime’s autocracy and its disregard for human rights,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a release.
Williams said it was the second time in two years that his office and the FBI had “disrupted plots originating from within Iran to kidnap or kill this victim for the ‘crime’ of exercising the right to free speech, to independent political thought, and to advocating for the rights of the oppressed and disenfranchised inside Iran.”
(Updates with more details from Justice Department.)
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