Iranian activist, author, NPR personality, and anti-hijab crusader Masih Alinejad can breathe a little easier. Two men standing trial for trying to carry out a murder-for-hire plot engineered by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with Alinejad as the target were convicted in a New York City court on Thursday on all counts.
Alinejad said she wept when she heard of the verdict.
“I am relieved that after nearly three years, the men who plotted to kill me have been found guilty. But make no mistake, the real masterminds of this crime are still in power in Iran,” she said. “Right now I am bombarded with emotions. I have cried. I have laughed. I have even danced.”
Alinejad was walking around with a $500,000 bounty on her head courtesy of the fanatics in Tehran. After years of trying to smear and harass her and arresting family members, the Iranians decided the only way to silence her was to kill her.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard told the jury in closing arguments, “When those efforts failed, the government of Iran put a $500,000 bounty on her head."
The two men convicted of attempted murder, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, were members of the Russian mafia with long arrest records. Another Russian mobster, Khalid Mehdiyev, was hired by Omarov to kill Alinejad and ended up on her back porch peering into her window, trying to ascertain if she was home. Police arrested him a few hours later and found a loaded AK-47 in his trunk.
In addition to Mr. Amirov and Mr. Omarov, several other men were indicted in the 2022 plot but have not been taken into U.S. custody. Among them are an accused Russian mob member named Zialat Mamedov and four Iranian men, including the Revolutionary Guards general, Ruhollah Bazghandi.
Prosecutors have said that Mr. Bazghandi’s network initiated the plot against Ms. Alinejad. A network member maintained contact with Mr. Amirov, a citizen of Azerbaijan and Russia who was living in Iran, prosecutors said. They added that Mr. Amirov turned to Mr. Omarov, a Georgian living in Eastern Europe, to carry out the plot.
Mr. Mehdiyev, an Azerbaijani man then living in Yonkers, N.Y., testified that Mr. Omarov called him saying that people he knew were willing to pay $160,000 for Ms. Alinejad’s murder.
Lawyers for Amirov and Omarov tried to destroy Mehdiyev's credibility. They weren't entirely successful. Although elements of the plot sometimes bordered on comic opera, the prosecutors had enough corroborating evidence to convict the two men.
According to Mr. Mehdiyev’s testimony, Mr. Omarov sent him photos of Ms. Alinejad and her home and checked in on him daily, urging him to carry out his task. As pressure increased, Mr. Mehdiyev lied to Mr. Omarov, telling him he had obtained an accomplice and pretending to have rented a room inside Ms. Alinejad’s home.
His decision to step onto Ms. Alinejad’s porch was driven by a desire to bolster that falsehood, Mr. Mehdiyev said. He made a video depicting his hand reaching toward Ms. Alinejad’s door and sent it to Mr. Omarov.
“I was trying to just show him I’m going inside,” he testified.
Ordinarily, operatives for the IRGC would handle assassinations like this on their own. They carried out several assassinations in the early part of the 21st century in Western Europe, showing that almost no one was beyond their reach.
One plot involved Donald Trump and members of his national security team from his first administration. Prosecutors are pursuing a case against more IRGC members in a plot to kill former national security advisor John Bolton.
In a separate case, U.S. prosecutors in 2022 charged a man in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard with plotting to kill former U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.
Iranian officials vowed to exact revenge against Trump and others in his former administration over the 2020 drone strike that killed the prominent Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.
Members of the Quds Force report directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Any order to kill an American comes directly from him.
Perhaps a few well-placed "bunker-busting" bombs might persuade Khamenei to back off.
