NEW YORK: A US jury convicted two men Thursday of involvement in a plot allegedly hatched by Tehran to kill Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, prosecutors said.
Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, both members of an eastern European criminal gang who orchestrated a failed plot to assassinate campaigning reporter Alinejad, will face sentencing for murder-for-hire in a Manhattan court at a later date.
According to the Justice Department, the pair, members of the eastern European crime network, were “contracted” by Ruhollah Bazghandi, identified as a brigadier general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and other members of his network to murder Alinejad.
In July 2022, a man hired to carry out the assassination was arrested near Alinejad’s New York home with a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, the court heard over the two week trial.
Alinejad, 48, one of the most prominent dissident campaigners against Iranian authorities, has for years has pushed for the abolition of the obligatory headscarf in Iran under the banner of “MyStealthyFreedom.”
She left Iran in 2009.
Charges were unsealed in October against Bazghandi, a former intelligence officer.
Three other Iranians with “connections to the government of Iran” — Haj Taher, Hossein Sedighi and Seyed Mohammad Forouzan — were indicted over the affair.
None of them are in US custody and they are believed to be in Iran. They face charges of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and money laundering.
Tehran has routinely rejected similar US accusations about alleged plots to kill US officials or politicians in the past.
Masih wrote on X Thursday that “this is not just a verdict, but a historic step. I will continue to fight until the day all the criminals of this regime face justice.”
The United States has also accused Iran of seeking to assassinate US officials in retaliation for Washington’s killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
The State Department previously announced a $20 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the alleged Iranian mastermind behind a plot to assassinate former White House official John Bolton.
