Three members of an Eastern European crime group were arrested in a thwarted murder-for-hire plot targeting a U.S. journalist and human rights activist of Iranian origin who is a prominent critic of Iran, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday.
One of the men, 24-year-old New York resident Khalid Mehdiyev, was apprehended in late July with an AK-47-style assault rifle near the victim’s home in Brooklyn as he was about to “execute the attack on the victim,” according to an indictment unsealed Friday in Manhattan federal court.
Authorities said the plot was conducted at the behest of unidentified individuals in Iran.
The same victim had been the target of an earlier kidnapping plot, which led to the indictment in 2021 of four people who have ties to Iranian intelligence, authorities said.
Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian journalist, identified herself in 2021 as the target of the kidnapping plot. Alinejad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But in a tweet Friday, she wrote, “I just learned from 12 FBI agents that the 3 men hired by the Iranian regime to kill me on US soil have been indicted.”
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guards have been conducting these terrorist operations for four decades. Islamic Republic is ISIS with oil,” she wrote in the tweet, which included a video lasting more than two minutes.
“This is the face of a person who was a target of an assassination plot,” she said on the video. “Let me make it clear: I’m not scared for my life.”
“Because I knew that killing, assassinating, hanging, torturing, raping is in the DNA of the Islamic Republic. And that’s why I came to the United States of America, to practice my right, my freedom of expression, to give voice to brave people of Iran who say no to the Islamic Republic.”
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in a statement, said, “The law enforcement action today is the latest U.S. disruption of plotting activities against this victim and other Americans.”
“It follows a disturbing pattern of Iranian Government-sponsored efforts to kill, torture, and intimidate into silence activists for speaking out for the fundamental rights and freedoms of Iranians around the world,” Sullivan said,
The latest plot began in 2022, when members of the Eastern European crime organization known as “Thieves-in-Law,” which has ties to Iran, were enlisted to assassinate the victim, according to an indictment, which does not identify the victim by name.
That group’s participation in the plot was directed by a man named Rafat Amirov, the group’s leader, who lives in Iran and “who was tasked with targeting the Victim by individuals in Iran,” according to the indictment, which was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Amirov, 43, was taken into custody on Thursday in New York. He is due to be arraigned Friday in Manhattan federal court.
In addition to him and Mehdiyev, who lives in Yonkers, the other man charged was Polad Omarov, who was arrested on Jan. 4 in the Czech Republic, where he lives. Omarov also lives in Slovenia.
All three men are charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. They face a maximum possible prison sentence of 20 years if convicted of the money laundering count, and a 10-year maximum prison term for each of the murder-for-hire charges.
Mehdiyev also is charged with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number, which has a maximum prison sentence of five years.
The indictment says that Amirov directed Omarov, who is a member of the crime group, in the plot to kill the journalist.
Omarov, in turn, directed Mehdiyev “to carry out the plot against the victim,” the indictment says.